U8RARY 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

IRVINE 

GIFT  OF 

CAROLYN  KAPLAN 


SECOND    NIGHTS 


SECOND  NIGHTS 

PEOPLE   AND   IDEAS 
OF   THE   THEATRE   TO-DAY 


'BY 
ARTHUR   RUHL 

Author  of  "The  Other  Americans?* etc. 


NEW  YORK:  CHARLES  SCSI'S  NERS  SONS 


1914 


Copyright,  1914,  by  Charles  Scribner's  Sons 


Published  February,  1914 


/ 


PREFACE 

THE  first-nighter,  as  everybody  knows,  is  a 
bored  but  witty  person,  with  a  black  ribbon 
to  his  eye-glasses,  who  descends  to  his  seat 
just  before  the  curtain  rises,  and  turns  to 
survey  the  house  ere  he  sits  down.  In  New 
York,  where  theatres  spring  up  overnight,  he 
may  be  the  large,  red-necked  man  who  sup- 
plied the  concrete,  but  he  is  generally,  at  any 
rate,  an  insider,  stirred  by  many  things  that 
pass  the  outsider  by  and  inclined  to  be  as 
concerned  over  the  probable  size  of  the  au- 
dience on  the  third  Tuesday  as  in  the  mere 
pleasure  or  nourishment  to  be  had  from  the 
play.  He  is  both  spectator  and  participant, 
urging  a  new  ship  down  the  ways,  and  finds 
his  interest  divided  perforce  between  the  ship 
as  a  ship  and  the  success  of  the  launching. 
Author  and  players  are  waiting  behind  that 
closed  curtain — be  the  play  never  so  unimpor- 
tant, there  is  mystery  and  excitement  in  the 
air. 

[  v] 


Preface 

The  second-nighter  breathes  a  duller  ether. 
Gone  is  the  mystery  and  contagious  warmth, 
the  first  night's  febrile  unrest.  The  show- 
man has  opened  his  bag  of  tricks;  the  pack 
are  off,  baying  after  new  game.  There  is 
"no  one"  in  the  audience.  The  man  in  front 
does  not  turn  round  to  tell  you  how  the  author 
sat  up  all  the  night  before  rewriting  his  third 
act — he  is  mere  "paper,"  or  the  brother  of 
the  property  man's  wife,  or  the  sad-eyed  sub- 
editor of  a  technical  magazine,  or  an  out-of- 
town  "buyer"  drifted  in  to  "The  Lady  from 
the  Sea,"  thinking  it  a  musical  comedy.  The 
play  is  better  given  than  on  the  first  night, 
but  it  stands  on  its  own  feet,  is  shorn  of 
extraneous  glamour.  And  the  second-nighter 
himself,  though  he  turn  up  as  regular  as  the 
clock — and  magazine  critics  are  likely  to 
receive  tickets  for  second  nights — is  scarcely 
detached  from  the  common  herd.  He  is  part 
of  the  "public."  The  news  and  the  spot- 
light have  swung  on  ere  he  arrives. 

Nor  is  this  without  its  compensations.  If 

he  misses  the  gossip  and  excitement,  he  has 

a  clearer  view  of  the  play.  If  a  critic,  he  is 

almost  too  remote  and  leisurely  to  be  worth 

[  vi  ] 


Preface 

the  showman's  time  and  is  left  a  free  agent, 
to  come  and  go  unnoticed  in  the  crowd. 

The  observations  recorded  here  were  made 
through  several  years  of  second  nights — a 
period  from  1905  down  to  the  present,  of  in- 
teresting and  significant  change  in  the  English- 
speaking  theatre — in  the  intervals  of  other 
reporting.  The  "second"  night  sometimes  be- 
came the  second  week  or  month,  and  a  flood 
or  a  prize-fight,  a  revolution  or  a  political  con- 
vention, came  in  between.  This,  in  itself, 
inclined  one  toward  the  general  and  human 
rather  than  severely  technical  aspect  of  the 
stage,  and  perhaps  explains  the  fact  that  bur- 
lesquers  and  sombre  poets,  vaudevillians  and 
fine-spun  realists,  are  lumped  together  some- 
what unceremoniously.  The  inclination  was 
increased  in  my  own  case  by  the  fact  that  in 
writing  for  "Collier's"  —where  some  of  these 
comments  originally  appeared — one  was  serv- 
ing not  only  the  man  in  the  flat  overhead  and 
the  mythical  old  lady  in  Oshkosh  for  whom 
all  American  magazines  are  edited,  but — so 
we  fondly  imagined — pioneers  in  prairie  boom- 
towns  and  soldiers  in  tropical  isles.  The  the- 
atre and  its  people  are  a  side  of  life,  like 
[  vii  ] 


Preface 

any  other,  and  these  chapters  present  certain 
impressions  and  opinions  of  it  which,  for  one 
reason  or  another,  shine  out  of  that  long  and 
brightly  lighted  vista  of  theatre  nights,  that 
blur  of  audiences  and  of  players,  with  a  cer- 
tain warmth  and  friendliness,  like  remem- 
bered faces  seen  in  a  crowd. 


[  viii  ] 


CONTENTS 

/.  Samaritans  Unsung  I 

II.  Mr.  Shaw  Revisited  15 

///.  Novelli  and  Our  Own  47 

IF.  A  Minor  Poet  of  Broadway  83 

F.  The  Hidden  Meaning  93 

VI.  Some  Women  Play-Writers  115 

VII.  Ten-  Twenty-  Thirty  141 

VIII.  Mr.  Walter  and  the  "No  Quar- 
ter" School  164 

IX.  "Babbie"  1 80 

X.  On  the  Bowery  Again  203 

XI.  John  Bull  Disturbed  236 

XII.  By  Mr.  Belasco  245 

XIII.  In  Society  264 

XIV.  East  of  Suez  278 
XV .  ''  The  Great  American  Play"  287 

XVI.  Some  Ladies  Who  Dance  323 

XVII.  The  New  Drama  and  Drury  Lane    344 

[  ix] 


I 

SAMARITANS   UNSUNG 


SEVENTEEN  minutes  after  three  o'clock 
on  a  rainy  afternoon  —  a  New  York  rainy 
afternoon  in  Sixth  Avenue  under  the  ele- 
vated! The  soggy  sky  seems  to  have  fallen 
down  about  the  city  like  a  collapsed  tent.  The 
air  is  a  sort  of  dripping  smoke  splashed  with 
greenish-yellow  blurs  from  the  department- 
store  windows.  The  gutters  are  rivers.  Cabs, 
trucks,  horses,  policemen  are  locked,  grinding 
and  cursing,  at  every  corner.  The  trolley-cars 
—jammed  with  bedraggled  humans,  dripping, 
muddy,  exhaling  steamy  odors  of  rubber  and 
damp  leather  —  jerk  forward,  only  to  stop  again 
with  brakes  that  shriek  like  tortured  fiends. 

Mr.  Everett  Shinn  would  paint  you  an  en- 
trancing picture  of  such  a  scene  —  the  bent, 
hurrying  shoppers  (one  struggling  quaintly 
with  an  umbrella  which  an  impish  gust  of 
wind  blows  inside  out  as  he  comes  round  the 
corner),  the  blown  skirts,  the  drip  from  ev- 
erything, the  turgid,  yellow-greenish,  fasci- 


Second  Nights 


nating  gloom.  It  is  pleasanter  to  see  such  a 
picture  than  to  be  one.  Suppose  you  were  one 
of  the  crowd — a  stranger  in  the  gates,  a  drum- 
mer who  has  made  his  rounds,  an  actor  out 
of  a  job,  one  of  the  army  of  fagged  women 
emerging  from  the  stifling,  soap-scented  air 
of  some  bargain  battle-ground,  arms  full  of 
parcels,  hair  awry,  trading  stamps  hopelessly 
gummed  together  in  her  crowded  pocket- 
book. 

The  exhilaration  imparted  by  the  cup  of 
chocolate  and  the  marked-down  eclair  picked 
up  on  the  way  from  the  linen  department  to 
carpets-rugs-portm\s--curtain-rings-fl?z'-curtains 
is  dying,  yet  dinner  is  hours  away.  It  is  too 
late  for  the  matinee,  yet  too  early  for  tea. 
Behind,  the  fretful  hours  of  bargaining;  in 
front,  the  cold  and  melancholy  winter  rain— 
the  hopeless,  insurmountable  rain  of  the  sag- 
ging afternoon. 

It  was  with  at  least  vicarious  participation 
in  some  such  state  of  mind  as  this  that  I  em- 
barked on  a  Sixth  Avenue  train  at  Eighteenth 
Street  the  other  day  and  found  myself,  a  few 
minutes  later,  in  a  balcony  box  in  the  Lincoln 
Square  Theatre,  agreeably  intrenched  behind 

[   2   ] 


Samaritans  Unsung 


two  large  ladies  in  white  shirt-waists,  who 
genially  twisted  their  chairs  and  slanted  their 
heads  so  that  I  might  see.  It  was  the  charmed 
hour  for  vaudeville — that  warm,  bright,  sachet- 
powder-and-caramel-scented  Lethe  from  re- 
ality and  the  dripping  skies.  To  the  right  was 
a  vast  array  of  shirt-waists — punctuated  with 
occasional  coats — and  faces,  eager,  smiling, 
and  a  little  wistful;  the  faces  of  those  who  had 
come,  not  merely  to  look  at  each  other,  at  the 
stage  a  little,  and  pass  the  time  between  an 
elaborate  dinner  and  an  indigestible  supper, 
but  as  animals  huddled  together  to  meet  a 
storm,  as  humans  hungry  to  be  cheered,  to 
laugh  and  forget  in  each  other's  company. 
On  the  stage  a  little  lady  was  doing  a  turn 
called  "Five  Feet  of  Comic  Opera." 

The  first  feeling  I  had  was  that  of  sympa- 
thy for  Miss  Grace  Hazard,  for,  having  seen 
her  before  and  being  convinced  that  she  must 
be  in  as  bad  a  humor  as  the  rest  of  us,  it 
seemed  that  it  must  be  the  acutest  form  of  tor- 
ture to  be  obliged  to  repeat  that  rather  sim- 
pering, saccharine  act  over  and  over  again, 
whether  one  wanted  to  or  not.  Before  she  left 
the  stage  it  seemed  to  me  that  she  ought  to 

[3  ] 


Second  Nights 


be  one  of  the  most  contented  citizens  in  the 
republic. 

She  is  a  little  lady  with  a  turned-up  nose,  a 
wide,  cheerful  smile,  and  dainty  ways.  Her  act 
consists  in  singing  favorite  songs  from  the  old 
comic  operas,  changing  her  costume  as  she 
changes  the  song  by  magically  taking  some- 
thing off  or  turning  something  inside  out,  and 
prefacing  each  change  by  telling  the  audience, 
in  the  awestruck  singsong  of  a  little  girl,  some- 
thing like  this: 

"Not  for  the  world — would  I — deceive, 

For  here's  the  coat — right — in — my — sleeve! 

Another  change  before  I  go. 

My!     What  is  this?     But  a  chapeaul" 

You  should  have  heard  the  little  breezes  of 
amusement  and  surprise  blow  across  the  audi- 
ence as  each  costume,  like  a  thin  husk,  came 
off  and  disclosed  another  one.  Even  the  basket 
of  flowers  which  the  usher  brought  up  con- 
cealed plaids  and  a  Glengarry  into  which  she 
slipped  with  a  "Great  Scott!  Well — I'll — be 
—kilt!"  and  sang  the  Merry  Miller's  song 
from  "Rob  Roy."  Who  knows  what  happy 
memories  were  hidden  beneath  the  murmur 

[4] 


Samaritans  Unsung 


that  went  through  the  house  as  she  stepped 
into  the  spot-light  and  sang:  "I  dreamt  that 
I  dwelt  in  marble  halls"! 

The  tension  of  the  day's  clinging  sordidness 
broke  as  it  breaks  at  the  hurdy-gurdy's  song 
or  when  the  man  with  the  little  piece  of  bent 
tin  between  his  teeth  whistles  divinely  above 
the  roar  of  the  street.  All  these  humans,  each 
enmeshed  in  his  individual  chain  of  circum- 
stance, were  for  the  moment  released.  They 
loved  the  song  and  they  loved  the  bright  little 
figure  with  the  turned-up  nose  and  wide, 
cheerful  smile — and  they  loved  each  other. 
Miss  Hazard  may  have  felt  the  gloomy 
weather,  too,  but,  all  the  same,  I  think  she 
ought  to  have  been  pretty  well  contented. 
What  she  did  is  not  often  done  even  by  the 
solemnest  and  most  pretentious  art. 

Vaudeville  resembles  the  circus.  You  like  it 
partly  because  you  never  know  what  is  com- 
ing next  and  partly  because  you  not  only  do 
know  what  is  coming  next,  but  you  know  that 
it  will  be  as  exactly  like  what  came  last  year, 
or  twenty  years  ago,  as  one  baby  or  one  Christ- 
mas is  like  another.  Observe,  for  instance, 
Mr.  Oswald  Williams,  the  "superb  and  un- 

[  5  1 


Second  Nights 


approachable  illusionist,"  who  next  appears. 
You  think  you  are  amused  because  you  see 
through  the  trick  or  it  is  new,  because  the 
chest  into  which  he  is  locked,  after  being 
hauled  half-way  to  the  ceiling,  crumbles  up  at 
a  pistol-shot  into  a  bit  of  cloth,  while  Mr. 
Magician  calmly  appears  from  off  stage  as  if 
he  had  never  climbed  into  the  chest  at  all. 
But  what  really  amuses  you  and  throws  you 
into  a  sort  of  trance  of  peaceful  delight  is  the 
way  he  sprints  about  in  his  soft-treading, 
patent-leather  pumps,  with  short,  quick  steps, 
as  if  he  were  a  biograph  picture,  and  taps 
things  with  his  wand  and  smiles  his  uncanny 
smile  and  goes  right  on  fooling  you  exactly  as 
magicians  have  always  done  and  as  it  would 
shock  and  distress  you  not  to  have  them  do. 
It  is  the  same  with  the  Two  Romanos  who 
follow  and  play  trumpets  in  all  sorts  of  ex- 
traordinary ways,  Mr.  Romano  actually  put- 
ting two  horns  to  his  mouth  at  once  and  play- 
ing the  air  on  one  and  the  alto  on  another  with 
the  same  split  breath!  That's  all  very  well  as 
far  as  it  goes,  but  the  really  wonderful  thing 
is  the  absolutely  unhuman  and  manikin-like 
smile  which — as  all  such  performers  have  done 

[6] 


Samaritans  Unsung 


before  them — they  succeed  in  putting  on  their 
muscular  and  much-practised  lips  as  they 
wet  them  preparatory  to  each  toot,  and  the 
look  of  apathy  and  even  semiasphyxiation 
which  the  athletic  Mr.  Romano  is  able  to  as- 
sume while  playing  alone,  even  though  Mrs. 
Romano,  by  way  of  assisting  the  audience  to 
appreciate  his  skill,  is  regarding  him  with  awe- 
struck interest  and  enthusiasm. 

And  is  it  not  the  same  with  the  equilibrists 
and  tumblers  ? — so  much  so,  indeed,  that  when 
Mr.  George  Spink  introduces  a  parody  of  them 
in  his  musical  sketch,  "At  the  Country  Club" 
—I  believe  we  are  at  the  Colonial  now — you 
are  ready  to  fall  off  your  chair  with  delight, 
although  he  and  the  other  man  and  the  ath- 
letic-looking lady  who  helps  them  do  nothing 
but  say  "Hup!"  and  walk  with  quick  little 
steps  and  wave  gracefully  to  the  galleries  and 
never  turn  any  somersaults  at  all! 

To  a  class  depending  more  on  individuality 
belong  the  monologue  artists — Mr.  Jim  Thorn- 
ton, for  instance,  and  Mr.  James  Morton,  the 
man  who  answers  his  own  questions.  Each  has 
his  peculiar  knack,  and  it  is  often  hard  to 
analyze  why  some  are  funny  and  some  are  not, 

[7] 


Second  Nights 


but  it  is  safe  to  assume  that  the  more  solemn 
they  appear  the  more  amusing  they  are  going 
to  be.  What  more  refreshing,  after  spinning  in- 
tellectual cobwebs  or  trying  to  extract  nour- 
ishment from  some  sawdust-stuffed  "society" 
play,  than  to  watch  one  of  these  gloomy  gen- 
tlemen tramp  down  to  the  footlights  in  a  but- 
toned-up  frock  coat,  look  straight  at  the  bal- 
cony rail,  and,  with  severe  lines  drawn  about 
his  mouth  and  an  undertaker's  voice,  chant: 

'The  waitress  says  to  me:   'What'll  you 
have — beefsteak  or  coffee?'  H'm! 

"I  says:  'Haven't  you  got  anything  else?' 

"Well,  she  brought  me  a  plate  of  con- 
somme. She  set  it  down  on  the  table  and  she 
says:  'It  looks  like  rain,  doesn't  it?' 

:'It  does,'  I  says,  'and  it  tastes  like  it,  too.' 
H'm! 

"I  was  playing  one-night  stands  with  an 
'Uncle  Tom's  Cabin'  troupe  out  in  Ohio. 
We  had  a  fine  company — -a.  fine  company.  We 
carried  a  full  band.  We  had  to  carry  it — they 
were  full  all  the  time.  H'm! 

"The  public  didn't  seem  to  appreciate  the 
show,  though.  Finally,  one  night,  we  had  to 
call  the  performance  off.  The  hounds  refused 
[  8  ] 


Samaritans  Unsung 


to  go  on.  They  complained  because  the  actors 
had  eat  up  all  their  meat  .  .  ."  He  finds  it 
hard  to  get  away.  The  audience  calls  him 
back  again  and  again.  Finally  he  stalks  in  in 
time  to  a  solemn  march,  turns  about,  and 
stalks  solemnly  out — or  is  it  the  man-who- 
answers-his-own-questions  who  does  that?— 
and  the  crowd  laughs  louder  than  ever. 

There  are  people  who  become  interesting 
on  the  vaudeville  stage  because  of  what  they 
have  done  off  it.  As  this  is  being  written,  you 
may  see  Miss  Mabel  Kite  berate  Mr.  Mike 
Donlin  for  striking  out,  just  as  contemporary 
tradition  declares  occasionally  happens  in  the 
Donlin  home  circle  when  the  distinguished 
right-fielder  is  off  his  game.  The  Fitzsimmonses 
are  visible,  too,  and  you  can  see  Mr.  Bob 
Fitzsimmons  punching — no,  not  Mrs.  Fitz- 
simmons,  but  a  bag — in  something  called  "A 
Man's  a  Man  for  a'  That."  And  possibly  you 
can  sec,  although  I  hope  you  cannot,  Mr.  John 
J.  Hayes  advertising  a  pair  of  rubber  heels 
and  telling  how  he  won  the  Marathon  race. 
Perhaps  he  only  consents  to  wear  the  heels  in 
the  newspaper  advertisements.  Nobody  enjoys 
seeing  our  young  athletes  turn  professionals, 

[9] 


Second  Nights 


but  it  certainly  would  be  harrowing  to  see  so 
accomplished  an  athlete  as  Hayes  running  on 
his  heels. 

The  American  Theatre  turned  the  other  day 
from  the  depiction  of  the  eternal  struggle  be- 
tween beautiful  cloak  models  and  gentlemen 
with  black  mustaches  to  vaudeville,  and  the 
manager  celebrated  the  event  by  honoring  me 
with  two  aisle  seats.  To  this  happy  chance 
I  owe  my  first  sight  of  Barnold's  Dogs,  al- 
though I  understand  that  the  experience  can- 
not be  viewed  as  a  discovery. 

The  curtain  rises  on  a  miniature  city  street. 
There  is  a  saloon,  a  policeman's  signal-box,  a 
police  station,  and  other  things.  The  trainer 
does  not  appear  at  all,  and  the  dogs,  dressed 
to  represent  various  sorts  of  humans,  march 
in  on  their  hind  legs  and  go  about  their  busi- 
ness, especially  that  of  patronizing  the  bar- 
room, as  if  no  one  else  were  there.  You  should 
see  the  old  lounger  sitting  up  on  his  haunches 
beside  the  door,  see  him  eye  each  newcomer 
inquiringly,  then,  with  the  drollest  look  im- 
aginable, follow  him  in,  emerge,  presently, 
licking  his  chops  with  satisfaction,  and  again 
take  his  place  to  wait  for  the  next  victim.  And 

t  10] 


Samaritans  Unsung 


especially  you  should  see  the  astonishing  ani- 
mal who  imitates  a  too-genial  citizen.  With 
unrepentant  grin  he  starts  across  the  street, 
zigzags  uproariously,  even  falls  and  labori- 
ously picks  himself  up,  and  finally,  after  sev- 
eral wild  and  incredibly  human  attempts, 
makes  the  lamp-post  on  the  other  side  and 
clings  to  it.  Then  the  monkey  policeman  comes 
along,  turns  in  the  alarm,  the  patrol-wagon 
drives  up,  clanging,  and  the  unhappy  baccha- 
nalian is  haled  to  the  station-house. 

Imitations  of  drunken  men  are  not,  perhaps, 
the  pleasantest  things  in  the  world,  but  this 
gifted  animal  performs  his  part  with  such  real- 
ity, and  he  looks  round  toward  the  audience, 
panting,  with  such  contagious  good  humor;  he 
is,  indeed,  such — if  Mr.  John  Burroughs  will 
permit  me  to  say  so — an  artist,  that  I  think 
you  not  only  would  not  be  repelled,  but  would 
applaud  with  the  rest  and  might  almost  want 
to  invite  Mr.  Barnold's  comedian  out  to  dinner. 

But  what — however  fancy  may  roam,  the 
body  is  still  ensconced  in  the  upper  left-hand 
box  at  the  Lincoln  Square — what  are  these 
unusual  sounds  from  the  orchestra?  This 
thumping,  marching  rhythm,  with  a  wailing, 

t »  i 


Second  Nights 


windy  accompaniment,  as  it  were,  supporting 
it  and  blowing  it  along?  What  but  an  orches- 
tral adaptation  of  bagpipe  music  and — at  last, 
at  last!  It's  Harry  Lauder!  In  he  ambles,  that 
quaint,  bow-legged  figure,  with  the  big,  rug- 
ged, comic  face,  in  kilts  and  low  cavalry  boots, 
which  he  taps  with  a  riding-whip  as  he  stumps 
along. 

Our  ears  are  so  accustomed  to  syncopated 
time  that  this  swinging,  singsong  rhythm 
seems  altogether  new  and  delightful.  That  part 
of  Lauder's  charm  lies  in  this  music  was 
proved  to  me  at  the  American  by  a  sketch 
called  "Breaking  Into  Society,"  in  which  one 
of  the  Four  Mortons,  in  a  hussar's  uniform  and 
beating  a  drum,  marches  back  and  forth  along 
the  footlights  to  just  such  time.  And,  although 
she  didn't  pretend  to  any  of  Mr.  Lauder's  art, 
you  could  watch  that  facile  step,  the  knee 
bending  a  bit  each  time,  till  the  cows  come 
home.  And  the  Scotch  burr  is  comic  in  itself 
to  American  ears,  and,  also,  Mr.  Lauder  is  an 
artist  in  his  way  as  Chevalier  is  in  his. 

The  audience,  that  rainy  afternoon,  miles 
away  from  gloom  by  this  time,  warm,  cheer- 
ful, and  beaming  from  ear  to  ear  with  the  con- 

[    12] 


Samaritans  Unsung 


tagion  of  a  common  enjoyment,  leaned  for- 
ward and  clapped  rapturously  and  would  have 
listened  forever.  The  canny  Scot  declared  at 
last,  however,  that  it  was  tea  time  for  him,  and 
away  he  stumped.  And  out  poured  the  crowd 
into  the  city  again,  the  glistening,  wet  city, 
now  warm  and  cheerful  with  the  evening 
lights.  The  "L"  trains  were  pouring  north- 
ward, the  trolley-cars,  crowded  with  folks  go- 
ing home  to  dinner,  crept  close  on  each  other's 
heels.  And  the  misty  rain,  suffused  with  the 
glow  from  millions  of  lamps,  enveloped,  drew 
about  the  town,  softening  its  countenance  and 
wrapping  the  streets  in  a  new  intimacy  and 
seclusion. 

They  had  dissipated — (the  word  means 
thrown  away,  and  in  cold  blood,  out  of  all  the 
world's  possibilities,  to  choose  a  variety  show 
for  a  clear,  frosty  winter  evening  might  be 
throwing  it  away) — they  had  dissipated  the 
little  crust  of  individual  habit,  care,  and  worry 
which  so  easily  hardens  around  those  who  live, 
in  these  noisy  canyons  of  stone  and  steel,  their 
isolated  and  specialized  lives.  Their  spirits 
were  free  again  to  share  and  merge  with  those 
about  them. 

[  13 1 


Second  Nights 


— And  I'm  we-ee-ary — 
For  my  de-ee-arie — 
I'd  rather  lose  my  whup  than 
lose  my  da-aisy!" 

they  hummed  as  they  poured  out  of  the  thea- 
tre and  were  swallowed  up  by  the  town. 

December,  1908. 


II 

MR.  SHAW  REVISITED 

•»»  =***- 

Our  old  friend,  the  theatrical  band-wagon,  not  with- 
out some  creaks  in  his  joints,  with  bits  of  his  new  ginger- 
bread cracking  and  tumbling  down  on  the  cobblestones, 
is  coming  down  the  street  again.  How  the  people,  all 
fresh  from  their  summers  in  the  country,  crowd  round, 
glad  to  see  the  lights  and  hear  the  old  tunes  played 
again!  Let's  down  into  the  street  with  them  and  see 
what  we  can  see.  In  front,  right  up  with  the  driver,  we 
discern  the  lean,  restless  countenance  of  Mr.  G.  Ber- 
nard Shaw.  What  a  busy  and  amusing  person  it  is! 
With  one  hand  he  explodes  firecrackers  and  sends  up 
skyrockets,  trailing  long  tails  of  brightest  sparks — 
Whis-s-sh! — into  the  air.  They  burst  up  there,  and  little 
balloons  go  trailing  away  with  strange  mottoes  on  them. 
From  the  ground  they  are  a  bit  hard  to  read,  but  some 
of  them  look  like  "2+2  =  5,"  "Hate  Your  Neighbors," 
"Dishonor  Your  Parents,"  "Whatever  You  Are  Be 
Queer,"  and  the  like.  Few  of  the  crowd  try  to  make 
them  out,  but  they  laugh  at  the  bright  colors  and  clap 
their  hands.  In  his  other  hand  Mr.  Shaw  holds  a  big 
slap-stick.  With  this  he  reaches  out  and  whacks  the  peo- 
ple in  the  crowd — wherever  a  head  shows — because  he 
is  clever  with  his  slap-stick  and  wants  you  to  know  it. 
Sometimes  he  catches  shifty  folks  before  they  can  dodge 

t  15  ] 


Second  Nights 


— see  old  Pecksniff's  top-hat  go  tumbling  into  the  gut- 
ter and  hear  the  crowd  roar — but  quite  as  often  he 
comes  down — Slap! — on  the  young,  unsuspecting  ones, 
so  pleased  with  their  dreams  and  enthusiasms,  and 
what  they  call  their  ideals,  that  they  never  think  to  get 
out  of  the  way.  Watch  him  catch  that  young  girl, 
crowding  up  the  rest,  laughing  and  breathless,  on  the 
arm  of  her  young  man. 

"He  thinks  you're  a  divinity  now,"  shouts  Mr. 
Shaw,  "but  if  he  marries  you,  in  a  month  you  won't 
have  any  more  divinity  for  him  than  a  muffin!" 

"Then  you  mean  to  say  he'll  get  tired  of  me?"  gasps 
the  young  girl,  tears  springing  into  her  eyes. 

"No,  not  at  all!"  returns  Mr.  Shaw,  with  a  burst  of 
his  queer,  sardonic  laughter,  "one  doesn't  get  tired  of 
muffins!" 

Of  course,  a  slap-stick  does  not  hurt  much,  but  isn't 
it  odd  for  a  grown-up  man  to  like  so  much  to  whack 
those  whom  he  can  whack  so  easily?  Some  of  the 
crowd  seem  to  think  so,  anyway,  and  they  are  pushing 
up,  shouting:  "Throw  him  out  of  the  band-wagon!" 
But  the  fellows  sitting  up  on  the  high  stools  wave  their 
arms  frantically  and  tell  everybody  to  hush  up  and  keep 
still.  These,  it  seems,  are  the  critics — the  men  on  the 
high  stools. 

"Ssh!"  they  cry.  "Never  mind  what  Shaw  does! 
Don't  take  him  seriously,  because  that's  just  what  he 
likes;  besides,  it  will  make  people  think  you  come  from 
Galesburg  or  Kansas  City!" 

[  16] 


Mr.  Shaw  Revisited 


But  the  band-wagon  passes  on  and  our  frightened 
maiden  dries  her  eyes,  "Oh,  look!"  she  cries,  for  down 
the  street  another  top-hat  has  gone  bumpety-bump 
into  the  gutter.  "After  all,  he's  a  very  funny  man  and 
almost  the  only  one  in  the  band-wagon  with  any  life." 

"I'd  like  to  get  hold  of  him,"  says  the  young  man. 
"I'd  show  him!"  But  the  girl  only  laughs — now  quite 
merrily. 

"Oh,  never  mind,"  says  she,  "it  didn't  hurt,  really." 
She  is  a  faith  curist,  you  see,  and  if  you  only  have  faith, 
folks  like  Mr.  Shaw  can  whack  you  over  the  head  as 
hard  as  ever  they  want  to,  and  it  doesn't  hurt. 

I  HESE  words,  written  in  the  dark  backward 
and  abysm  of  1905,  when  Ibsen  was  still 
regarded  as  a  rather  horrible  old  gentleman 
growing  toadstools  in  a  cellar  and  the  younger 
English  realists  had  not  been  heard  of,  ex- 
press a  feeling  rather  common  to  American 
audiences  when  first  they  saw  Mr.  Shaw's 
plays — perhaps  one  should  say  when  first  his 
plays  saw  them. 

I  well  recall  that  busy  New  York  noon, 
the  Childs  Restaurant  on  Sixth  Avenue  just 
above  Fourteenth  Street.  Undimmed  return 
the  two  fat  ladies  opposite,  in  slightly  wilted 
white  shirt-waists,  munching  butter  cakes; 


Second  Nights 


the  afternoon  paper  propped  against  the 
sugar  bowl;  the  steady  clatter  of  dishes;  the 
gnawing  distress  of  mind.  "Man  and  Super- 
man" had  just  appeared,  and  it  devolved  on  a 
dramatic  reporter  to  say  something  about  it. 

Now,  it  is  not  difficult  to  say  something 
about  the  ordinary  play.  The  spectator  feels 
that  if  he  took  a  day  off  he  could  write  a 
better  one,  or  at  least  that  he  knows  where 
the  author  made  his  mistakes.  He  watches  the 
playwright  as  he  watches  a  man  walk  a  tight 
rope.  He  couldn't  do  it  himself,  perhaps,  but 
he  knows  how  it  ought  to  be  done. 

This  restful  pose,  however,  was  precisely 
what  Mr.  Shaw  would  not  permit.  What  the 
audience  thought  of  him  appeared  the  least 
of  his  troubles,  so  absorbed  was  he  in  making 
clear  how  little  he  thought  of  them.  He  fol- 
lowed the  rule  of  street  fighting  and  knocked 
the  other  man  down  first.  He  tangled  us  up 
in  dialectic  nets  and  shot  our  pet  ideas  full 
of  holes,  and  we  were  as  ready  to  reply  as  to 
argue  with  a  repeating  rifle. 

Such  was  the  painful  situation  that  day  in 
the  restaurant,  when  suddenly,  through  the 
humid  air,  fragrant  of  coffee  and  toast  and 

[  18] 


Mr.  Shaw  Revisited 


browning  griddle-cakes,  Mr.  Shaw  and  his 
band-wagon  appeared,  and  the  pleasures  of 
reporting  replaced  the  more  laborious  task  of 
making  up  one's  mind. 

Nearly  everybody  in  those  days  was  made 
uneasy  by  Mr.  Shaw — theirs  the  same  de- 
fensive attitude,  a  similar  plaintive  note. 
They  were  used  to  "letting  themselves  go" 
in  the  theatre,  and  they  found  that  with  him 
they  never  could  let  themselves  go.  They 
must  always  be  ready  to  dodge.  They  were 
used  to  catching  the  author's  meaning — not  a 
violent  chase,  generally — but  they  couldn't 
catch  Mr.  Shaw.  He  was  an  electric  eel,  with 
a  very  high  intellectual  voltage,  watching  for 
a  chance  to  sting  his  pursuers,  leave  them 
gasping  and  vaguely  hurt. 

Glancing  recently,  for  the  first  time  in  sev- 
eral years,  into  one  of  Mr.  Shaw's  plays,  I 
was  surprised  to  find  how  harmless  and  well- 
meaning  he  had  become.  His  brilliance  had 
not  tarnished  in  the  interval — compared  with 
this  fancy  skater,  most  of  the  other  wits  of 
the  day  seem  to  be  shuffling  about  in  their 
goloshes — but  it  was  less  clear  that  he  was 
solely  ben,t  on  our  embarrassment  and  undo- 


Second  Nights 


ing.  I  was  curious  enough  to  read  through  the 
other  plays  and  prefaces — in  several  cases  the 
first  time  I  had  taken  the  trouble  to  find 
out  what  he  actually  said  instead  of  taking 
him  for  granted — and  the  impression  was  but 
deepened.  It  even  appeared  doubtful  if,  in 
spite  of  his  fondness  for  beating  the  big  drum, 
he  ever  made  an  assertion — even  that  he  was 
better  than  Shakespeare — that,  in  the  sense 
he  intended  it,  he  could  not  back  up. 

The  discovery  is  not,  I  fear,  a  dazzling  one, 
but  one  is  tempted  to  enlarge  on  it  a  little 
here  if  but  to  continue  an  inspection  inter- 
rupted that  day  in  the  restaurant  and  make  a 
trifle  clearer  the  shrieks  of  anguish  that  used 
to  fill  the  air. 

Looking  back  at  Mr.  Shaw  in  the  light  of 
some  of  our  own  journalistic  phenomena,  one 
might  almost  call  him  the  first  of  the  "muck- 
rakers."  Before  the  magazine  critics  began  to 
attack  specific  local  abuses,  he  was  a  kind  of 
muck-raker  at  large,  out  against  the  pillars 
of  society.  The  world  has  changed  a  good  deal 
since  Mr.  Shaw's  plays  first  appeared — we 
are  all,  so  to  speak,  iconoclasts  now,  and  any 
sweet  girl  graduate  can  lisp  things  about  rich 
[  20] 


Mr.  Shaw  Revisited 


men,  reactionary  politicians,  and  the  uneven 
distribution  of  justice  which  would  have  been 
regarded  as  anarchistic  in  1892.  Mr.  Shaw 
was  a  pioneer,  for  one  thing — incredibly  keen, 
clear-headed,  suspicious  of  humbug,  as  much 
an  alien  in  England  as  any  witty  Frenchman, 
and  ready  to  hit  any  head  in  sight. 

He  had  a  curious  clear-sightedness,  un- 
clouded by  most  of  the  mists  of  sentiment 
and  sense  which  envelop  the  ordinary  person, 
and  a  fierce  objection  to  being  so  enveloped. 
He  must  always  know  just  where  he  was  at. 
Imagine  him,  to  take  an  obvious  example,  in 
the  front  row  at  a  Broadway  musical  comedy 
alongside  one  of  our  famous,  tired  business 
men.  The  Sixteen  Beautiful  Milliners,  ship- 
wrecked on  a  desert  isle,  are  about  to  be 
marched  off  to  the  harem  of  the  local  Blue- 
beard, when  the  timely  arrival  of  a  United 
States  war-ship  transfers  them  to  the  gallant 
arms  of  chorus-gentlemen  marines. 

The  audience,  who  wish  they  were  ma- 
rines, are  permitted  vicariously  to  become  such 
whilst  a  tropical  moon  hitches  up  the  back 
drop.  In  its  melting  light  the  exiled  Amer- 
icans sing  "Home,  Sweet  Home,"  then  the 

[    21    ] 


Second  Nights 


band  swings  into  a  ragtime  medley  of  patri- 
otic airs,  and  the  curtain  goes  down  with  the 
limelight  sizzling  on  a  waving  American  flag 
and  the  well-powdered  arms  of  the  Sixteen 
Milliners,  with  a  few  of  the  audience  rising 
awkwardly  as  "The  Star-Spangled  Banner" 
is  played. 

The  weary  Titan  of  finance,  fatigued  as  one 
is  who  has  ridden  to  and  from  an  office  in  a 
well-padded  limousine,  smoked  a  dozen  fifty- 
cent  cigars,  eaten  a  heavy  luncheon,  a  still 
heavier  dinner,  and  taken  no  exercise,  decides 
that  life  is  beginning  to  look  up  and  applauds 
energetically  for  another  sight  of  the  flag  and 
the  lovely  milliners.  Mr.  Shaw,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  beside  himself.  It  is  not,  as  he  would 
explain,  that  he  objects  to  vulgarity.  Falstaff 
or  Doll  Tearsheet  do  not  bother  him  in  the 
least.  What  infuriates  him  is  this  mixing  of 
show  girls  and  patriotism.  It  represents  a 
muddled  thinking  which  offends  his  taste. 
His  logical  mind  demands  everything  in  its 
place,  while  in  most  of  the  audience's  minds 
things  are  all  over  the  place.  He  wants  to  get 
rid  of  the  flag  or  rid  of  the  girls.  And  to  hear 
him  go  at  it,  you  might  think  to  get  rid  of 

[   22] 


Mr.  Shaw  Revisited 


the  girls  he  would  get  rid  of  patriotism  it- 
self. 

Mr.  Shaw,  as  he  reveals  amusingly  in  his 
prefaces,  had  aggravated  his  natural  austerity 
by  nearly  asphyxiating  himself  in  art  and  the 
talk  of  it.  Any  one  who  has  been  put  through 
a  course  of  studio  teas  will  know  what  this 
means.  Mr.  Shaw  had  kept  at  it  for  years, 
writing  musical,  literary,  and  dramatic  criti- 
cism, stuffing  his  senses  until,  as  he  expressed 
it,  he  sank  like  a  baby  fed  on  starch.  Like  a 
man  who  had  been  restricted  to  an  exclusive 
diet  of  cream  puffs,  he  was  completely  and 
irrevocably  against  cream  puffs,  i.  e.,  against 
anything  soft,  pretty,  romantic — all  the  pleas- 
ant mists  of  make-believe  with  which  people 
hide  themselves  from  reality.  He  wanted  to 
bite  tenpenny  nails  or,  like  his  own  Mr. 
Crampton  in  "You  Never  Can  Tell,"  crack 
nuts  with  his  teeth  to  strengthen  his  char- 
acter. 

If  somebody  had  shanghaied  Mr.  Shaw 
and  compelled  him  to  serve  before  the  mast 
for  a  couple  of  years,  live  on  hardtack  and 
salt-horse,  and  furl  sails  barehanded  in  zero 
weather,  he  might  have  got  over  some  of  his 

[23 1 


Second  Nights 


fierceness  against  pretty  things.  Nobody  did 
so,  and  in  his  own  reaction  from  cream- 
puffery  he  seemed  to  see  thousands  of  people 
pleasantly  drugging  themselves  on  sentimen- 
tal concerts,  sermons,  and  fiction  in  order  to 
forget  overcrowded  tenements,  poverty,  dis- 
ease, crime,  and  the  things  that  should  have 
worried  them. 

"Paper  apostles  and  artist  magicians,"  he 
snorted,  anathematizing  the  whole  race  of 
artists,  "who  have  succeeded  in  giving  cow- 
ards all  the  sensations  of  heroes  whilst  they  tol- 
erate every  abomination.  .  .  .  The  pleasures 
of  the  senses  I  can  sympathize  with  and  share, 
but  the  substitution  of  sensuous  ecstasy  for 
intellectuality  and  honesty  is  the  very  devil." 

There  was  another  side  to  this  strange  clear- 
headedness of  Mr.  Shaw's — his  ability  to 
work  out  everything  in  our  complex  world  in 
a  perfectly  "natural,"  rational  way,  as  if  he 
had  just  stepped  off  an  aeroplane  from  Mars, 
an  intensely  keen,  witty  person  who  knew 
nothing  of  our  curious  inherited  prejudices 
and  conventions. 

Now,  of  course,  the  world  we  actually  live 
in  is  not  in  the  least  "natural"  or  "rational." 

1 24] 


Mr.  Shaw  Revisited 


There  is  nothing  rational  nor  beautiful  about 
the  woollen  pipes  in  which  the  modern  man 
encases  his  legs  nor  in  a  "bowler"  hat;  yet 
when  Mr.  Raymond  Duncan  ventured  to  ap- 
pear bareheaded  in  New  York,  in  a  rather 
beautiful  and  thoroughly  rational  Greek  cos- 
tume, the  Broadway  policeman,  symbol  of 
thoroughly  irrational  authority,  promptly— 
and  with  the  loud  approval  of  press  and 
public — clapped  him  into  jail.  If  looks  were 
spears  the  man  who  tried  to  walk  up  Fifth 
Avenue  in  a  comfortable  pair  of  white 
"sneakers"  would  die  a  thousand  deaths  ere 
he  had  strolled  a  dozen  blocks. 

There  is  generally  a  reason  for  these  ap- 
parent unreasons,  but  it  is  not  always  to  be 
found  on  the  surface,  and  a  clever  man, 
merely  by  looking  at  things  in  this  perfectly 
"natural"  way,  arrives  at  astonishing  con- 
clusions— paradoxes,  as  they  are  called — which 
hurt  and  bewilder  yet  cannot,  at  the  moment, 
be  answered. 

"Twelve  lawful  children,"  says  Mr.  Shaw 
in  his  rational  way,  "borne  by  one  highly 
respectable  lady  to  three  different  fathers  is 
not  impossible  nor  condemned  by  public 

[  25 1 


Second  Nights 


opinion.  That  such  a  lady  may  be  more 
law-abiding  than  the  poor  girl  whom  we  used 
to  spurn  into  the  gutter  for  bearing  one  un- 
lawful infant  is  no  doubt  true;  but  dare  you 
say  she  is  less  self-indulgent?" 

"She  is  less  virtuous,"  you  reply  stoutly; 
"that  is  enough  for  me." 

"In  that  case,"  Mr.  Shaw  demands,  "what 
is  virtue  but  the  trade-unionism  of  the  mar- 
ried?" 

Answers  to  such  knocks  may  doubtless  be 
found  next  morning,  but  in  the  theatre  they 
follow  one  another  too  rapidly,  and  when 
morning  comes  it  is  easier  to  hurry  off  to  one's 
office,  assuming  that  the  playwright  was  an 
impudent  crank,  than  it  is  to  read  all  that  he 
wrote,  and  the  preface  before  the  play,  and 
to  learn,  perhaps,  that  he  was  overstating  a 
truth  in  order  to  get  people  to  look  at  it,  just 
as  a  politician  who  wants  a  loaf  sometimes 
gets  a  slice  by  calling  his  opponents  murder- 
ers and  bandits,  when,  if  he  were  charitable, 
he  might  never  be  heard  at  all. 

The  "rational,"  man-from-Mars  argument 
is  not  always  a  fair  one,  yet  it  is  often  used 
with  good  effect  by  reformers,  trying,  as  Mr. 

[26] 


Mr.  Shaw  Revisited 


Shaw  was  trying,  to  attract  attention  and 
wake  people  up  to  the  fact  that  some  of  their 
popular  notions  make  them  do  foolish  and 
wicked  things.  Duelling,  for  instance,  used  to 
be  such  a  general  and  fashionable  idea,  and 
it  was  made  unpopular  by  exactly  Mr.  Shaw's 
kind  of  argument — by  stripping  it  of  romance 
and  making  people  feel  that  there  was  noth- 
ing fine  in  two  men  squaring  off  and  trying  to 
murder  one  another. 

People  who  believe  that  war  is  wicked  and 
absurd  often  use  the  "natural"  argument 
against  it,  and  a  thinker  like  Tolstoi  will  talk 
as  if  he  were  seeing  soldiers  for  the  first  time 
and  knew  nothing  of  the  ideas  they  stood 
for;  as  if  one  national  flag  was  but  a  piece  of 
bunting  like  another;  and  make  it  appear  ridic- 
ulous that  a  hundred  thousand  men  with  blue 
eyes,  who  love  life  and  their  families,  should 
try  to  murder  a  hundred  thousand  other  men 
with  black  eyes,  who  also  love  life  and  their 
families,  merely  because  they  disagree  about 
an  imaginary  line. 

It  is  an  effective  kind  of  argument  because 
it  gets  people  off  their  high  horses  and  down 
to  earth,  and  it  is  also  an  unsound  kind  of 

[27] 


Second  Nights 


argument  in  so  far  as  the  high  horses  are 
necessary  and  worth  while.  Of  course,  people 
can  no  more  get  along  without  romance  than 
they  can  get  along  without  bread  and  shoes, 
and  yet  there  is  so  much  fake  romance  that 
undoubtedly  it  is  a  good  thing  for  an  idol 
smasher  like  Mr.  Shaw  to  come  along  now 
and  then  and  clear  the  air.  And  the  London 
theatres  of  the  early  nineties  were  likely  places 
to  start  on. 

There  was  much  less  chance  then  of  finding 
plays  that  seemed  to  discuss,  interpret,  or 
make  interesting  the  vital  things  in  people's 
every-day  lives.  The  younger  English  realists 
had  yet  to  appear,  while  the  same  critics  who 
would  blandly  swallow  the  furtive  vulgarity 
of  musical  comedy  foamed  at  the  mouth  at 
the  recently  translated  Ibsen  plays,  as  if  the 
grim  old  Norwegian  had  stolen  their  silver  or 
run  off  with  their  wives. 

Their  ravings  seem  almost  incredible  now, 
and  it  is  scarcely  to  be  wondered  at  if  Mr. 
Shaw  felt  that  "the  actor's  main  business  is 
the  voluptuous  soothing  of  the  tired  city 
speculator  when  he  is  through  with  what  he 
calls  the  serious  business  of  the  day.  To  them 


Mr.  Shaw  Revisited 


such  phrases  as  impassioned  poetry  or  pas- 
sionate love  of  truth  have  fallen  out  of  their 
vocabulary.  To  them  passion,  the  life  of  the 
drama,  means  nothing  but  primitive  excite- 
ment." 

Pinero  was  on  the  tip  of  the  wave  and  a 
far  more  accomplished  playwright  than  Mr. 
Shaw  was  ever  to  become,  yet  he  was  a  man 
of  the  theatre  rather  than  a  thinker,  and  to 
this  high-voltage  radical  must  have  seemed 
almost  as  abreast  of  the  times  as  a  leading 
gentleman  in  musical  comedy  seems  to  the 
leader  of  a  settlement  house.  More  cream- 
puffery,  or  so  it  doubtless  seemed  to  Mr. 
Shaw,  and  he  set  out  to  write  a  new  kind  of 
play — plays  that  should  bring  into  the  thea- 
tre things  in  the  air  intelligent  people  were 
breathing,  that  spoke  their  language  and 
would  make  them  sit  up  and  take  notice  of 
things  he  thought  it  high  time  they  were 
noticing. 

These  were  many,  chief  among  them  the 
falsity  and  foolishness  of  "romance"— of 
masking  in  pleasant  general  ideas,  that  is  to 
say,  life's  actual  facts.  Ibsen  had  already  set 
the  fashion  of  attacking  ideals  to  which  the 

[29] 


Second  Nights 


individual  enslaved  himself  and  Mr.  Shaw 
took  up  the  same  game  in  his  lighter  and  more 
pyrotechnic  way.  Here,  in  "Arms  and  the 
Man,"  one  of  his  earlier  plays,  we  find  him 
charging  at  militarism  and  the  military  ideal. 
His  method  was  somewhat  that  of  Cervantes 
when  the  latter  showed  how  absurd  the  ro- 
mantic conventions  of  chivalry  became  when 
persisted  in  in  a  world  which  had  outgrown 
them,  except  that  in  the  Shaw  farce  it  was 
the  soldier  who  was  completely  matter-of-fact 
and  rational  and  the  Bulgarians,  amongst 
whom  he  found  himself,  whose  romantic  no- 
tions of  war  were  laughed  at. 

Bluntschli  fought  for  his  pay  envelope  like 
any  office  hack,  and  as  for  not  fearing  death, 
he  cheerfully  admitted  that  all  good  soldiers 
feared  it  very  much,  because  it  was  a  soldier's 
duty  to  live  as  long  as  he  could  and  kill  as 
many  of  the  enemy  as  possible.  When  the 
young  Bulgarian  lady  started  to  idealize  the 
man  who  led  a  cavalry  charge  as  "the  bravest 
of  the  brave,"  Bluntschli  only  grinned  and 
explained  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  man's 
horse  was  running  away  with  him.  When 
the  lady's  parents,  trying  in  their  mediaeval 

[30] 


Mr.  Shaw  Revisited 


way  to  impress  Bluntschli  with  the  style  of 
living  she  had  been  accustomed  to,  mention 
their  twenty-four  horses,  the  Swiss  replies 
that  he  himself  has  seventy. 

"I  have  nine  thousand  six  hundred  pairs 
of  sheets  and  blankets,  with  two  thousand 
four  hundred  eiderdown  quilts.  I  have  ten 
thousand  knives  and  forks  and  the  same 
quantity  of  dessert-spoons.  I  have  six  hundred 
servants.  I  have  six  palatial  establishments, 
besides  two  livery-stables,  a  tea-garden,  and  a 
private  house  ..." 

"Are  you  Emperor  of  Switzerland?"  asks 
the  pompous  Petkoff.  Bluntschli  explained 
that  he  kept  a  hotel. 

In  "The  Devil's  Disciple,"  when  General 
Burgoyne  is  asked  to  spare  the  life  of  one  of 
his  prisoners,  he  replies:  "Martyrdom  is  what 
these  people  like.  It  is  the  only  way  in  which 
a  man  can  become  famous  without  ability." 
When  his  prisoner,  following  the  custom  of 
spirited  captives  in  fiction,  demands  that  he 
be  shot  like  a  man  instead  of  hung  like  a  dog, 
Burgoyne  answers  sympathetically:  "Now, 
there,  Mr.  Anderson,  you  talk  like  a  civilian, 
if  you  will  excuse  my  saying  so.  Have  you 

[  31  ] 


Second  Nights 


any  idea  of  the  marksmanship  of  the  army  of 
his  Majesty,  King  George  the  Third?  If  we 
make  up  a  firing  party,  what  will  happen? 
Half  of  them  will  miss  you ;  the  rest  will  make 
a  mess  of  the  business  and  leave  you  to  the 
provo-marshal's  pistol.  Whereas  we  can  hang 
you  in  a  perfectly  workmanlike  and  agreeable 
way.  Let  me  persuade  you  to  be  hanged,  Mr. 
Anderson." 

Mr.  Shaw  has  a  wonderful  gift  for  this 
sort  of  thing — for  taking  posers  unawares 
joggling  people  out  of  their  attitudes,  pouncing 
on  the  strongest  thing  that  can  be  said  on  the 
"wrong"  side  of  a  question  and  promptly 
saying  it  with  such  wit  and  force  that  it 
seems  for  the  moment  unanswerable. 

He  is  never  more  amusing  than  in  his  at- 
tacks on  art  and  artists,  for  here  we  are  get- 
ting an  insider's  point  of  view — the  sarcasm 
of  a  man,  himself  an  artist,  yet  sane  and 
vigorous  enough  to  see  the  weaknesses  of  his 
own  kind  and  to  jump  on  them  unmercifully. 

What  could  be  quainter  and  more  unex- 
pected— at  least  to  a  generation  which  has  for- 
gotten Gilbert — than  such  a  scene  as  that  in 
"Antony  and  Cleopatra,"  where  Apollodorus, 

[32] 


Mr.  Shazu  Revisited 


"a  dashing  young  man  of  about  twenty-four, 
dressed  with  deliberate  estheticism  in  the  most 
delicate  purples  and  dove  grays,"  is  stopped 
on  his  way  to  Cleopatra  with  some  beautiful 
carpets  by  the  matter-of-fact  Roman  Sentinel : 

SENTINEL  (not  at  all  impressed,  -pointing  to  the  car- 
pets) :  And  what  is  all  this  truck? 

APOLLODORUS:  Carpets  for  the  furnishing  of  the 
Queen's  apartments.  I  have  picked  them  from  the  best 
carpets  in  the  world;  and  the  Queen  shall  choose  the 
best  of  my  choosing. 

SENTINEL:  So  you  are  a  carpet  merchant? 

APOLLODORUS  (hurt) :  My  friend,  I  am  a  Patrician. 

SENTINEL:  A  Patrician!  A  Patrician  keeping  a  shop 
instead  of  following  arms! 

APOLLODORUS:  I  do  not  keep  a  shop.  Mine  is  a  temple 
of  the  arts.  I  am  a  worshipper  of  beauty.  My  calling 
is  to  choose  beautiful  things  for  beautiful  Queens.  My 
motto  is  Art  for  Art's  Sake. 

SENTINEL:  That  is  not  the  password. 

APOLLODORUS:  It  is  a  universal  password. 

SENTINEL:  I  know  nothing  about  universal  pass- 
words. Either  give  me  the  password  for  the  day  or  get 
back  to  your  shop. 

Part  of  the  fun  of  this  comes,  of  course,  from 
the  surprise  of  finding  an  ancient  Roman  talk- 
ing like  a  sub-art-editor  at  a  studio  tea,  or  the 

[33  ] 


Second  Nights 


sort  of  young  man  who  loves  to  help  middle- 
aged  society  ladies,  whose  husbands  are  busy 
down-town,  arrange  the  details  of  Colonial 
balls  or  pageants  at  the  Plaza.  But  the  real 
surprise  is  to  meet  this  kind  of  satire  in  the 
theatre  at  all.  Just  as  Kipling  once  surprised 
the  ordinary  man  by  showing  that  literature 
belonged  to  him,  with  his  ships,  machinery, 
and  day's  work,  and  wasn't  monopolized  by 
long-haired  gentlemen  in  velvet  coats,  so  Mr. 
Shaw  similarly  surprised  and  delighted  by 
showing  how  easy  it  was  to  play  quite  com- 
fortably in  the  theatre  with  ideas  generally 
thought  to  be  the  property  of  literary  critics 
or  philosophers.  He  made  a  sort  of  intel- 
lectual farce  almost  fashionable — or,  at  any 
rate,  he  would  have  done  so  if  more  play- 
writers  were  well-read  and  witty  enough  to 
follow  his  lead. 

In  all  his  hooting  at  the  aesthetic  pose,  he 
amusingly  takes  sides  with  the  every-day  man. 
"I  know  there  are  men,"  says  he,  "who,  hav- 
ing nothing  to  say  and  nothing  to  write,  are 
nevertheless  so  in  love  with  oratory  and  liter- 
ature, that  they  keep  desperately  repeating 
as  much  as  they  can  understand  of  what  others 

[  34] 


Mr.  Shaw  Revisited 


have  said  or  written  aforetime.  I  know  that 
the  leisurely  tricks  which  their  want  of  con- 
viction leaves  them  free  to  play  with  the  di- 
luted and  misapprehended  message,  supply 
them  with  a  pleasant  parlor  game  which  they 
call  style." 

The  artistic  pose  is  not  as  fashionable  as  it 
was  when  Mr.  Shaw  first  came  to  London— 
although  here  in  America  the  absorption  of 
most  of  the  first-rate  men  in  business  often 
encourages  the  sixth-rate  man-  who  writes  or 
paints  or  plays  the  piano  to  bask  in  a  glamour 
he  could  not  hold  for  a  week  were  competi- 
tion as  keen  in  his  as  in  other  fields — but  there 
is  still  enough  to  go  round. 

And  just  as  it  amuses  and  relieves  us  from 
our  cramped  attitudes  of  adoration  to  be  told 
that  the  cavalry  hero's  horse  was  running 
away,  so  we  are  similarly  relieved  after  our 
long  praise  of  the  artist's  sacrifice  of  every- 
thing for  his  art,  to  hear  Mr.  Shaw — himself 
one  of  them — fling  back:  "Yes — the  true  artist 
will  let  his  wife  starve,  his  children  go  bare- 
foot, his  mother  drudge  for  his  living  at 
seventy,  rather  than  work  at  anything  but  his 
art.  To  women  he  is  half-vivisector,  half-vam- 

[35 1 


Second  Nights 


pire.  He  gets  into  intimate  relations  with  them 
to  study  them,  to  strip  the  mask  of  convention 
from  them,  to  surprise  their  inmost  secrets, 
knowing  they  have  the  power  to  make  him 
see  visions  and  dream  dreams,  inspire  him  as 
he  calls  it.  He  steals  the  mother's  milk  and 
blackens  it  to  make  printer's  ink  to  scoff  at 
her  and  glorify  ideal  woman  with.  Perish  the 
race  and  wither  a  thousand  women  if  only  the 
sacrifice  of  them  will  enable  him  to  act  Ham- 
let better,  to  paint  a  finer  picture,  to  write  a 
deeper  poem,  a  greater  play,  a  deeper  phi- 
losophy." 

This  may  be  overaccenting  the  "wrong'* 
side  of  the  matter,  yet  once  we  have  learned 
the  trick  of  it — learned,  that  is  to  say,  that 
the  "villain"  of  the  Shavian  drama  is  not  the 
ordinary  cutthroat  but  the  "wrong  side,"  so 
to  speak,  of  the  conventional  hero — there  is 
a  tonic  flavor  in  the  bitterness  and  we  feel 
that  same  stimulating  sense  of  "standing  up 
to  the  facts"  we  get  so  often  with  Mr.  Shaw. 

It  was  because  they  had  not  learned  this 
trick  that  his  earlier  audiences  were  shocked 
and  hurt  and  often  dismissed  him  as  "soul- 
less"— I  have  a  dim  recollection  of  having 

[  36] 


Mr.  Shaw  Revisited 


done  so  myself — when  they  could  think  of 
nothing  worse  to  say. 

The  treatment  of  Praed  in  "Mrs.  Warren's 
Profession"  is  characteristic.  In  real  life,  as 
viewed  by  most  of  Mr.  Shaw's  audiences, 
Praed  would  be  reckoned  a  desirable  and 
rather  charming  person — gentlemanlike  and 
appreciative,  with  a  gently  chivalrous  turn— 
the  sort  of  youngish  middle-aged  man  who  has 
nice  books  and  pictures  at  home  and  likes  to 
hunt  up  quaint  places  abroad.  The  ordinary 
novelist  or  playwright  would  treat  him  with 
every  consideration — in  Mr.  Shaw's  play  he 
becomes  a  sort  of  stained-glass  joke,  an  solian 
humbug — the  acid  fairly  burns  the  paper 
every  time  Mr.  Shaw  gives  him  a  line. 

It  is  after  the  audience  and  Vivie  have 
learned  the  true  nature  of  her  mother's  pro- 
fession that  this  fluty  sentimentalist  saunters 
in  to  urge  Vivie  to  cross  over  to  the  Continent 
and  "saturate  herself  with  beauty  and  ro- 
mance." Vivie,  quivering  still  at  the  revela- 
tion of  the  source  of  her  mother's  income, 
answers  that  there  is  no  beauty  and  no  ro- 
mance in  life  for  her.  Life  is  what  it  is  and 
she  is  prepared  to  face  it. 

[37] 


Second  Nights 


"You  will  not  say  that,"  persists  Praed,  "if 
you  come  to  Verona  and  on  to  Venice.  You 
will  cry  with  delight  at  living  in  such  a  beau- 
tiful world.  Oh,  I  assure  you  /  have  cried— 
I  shall  cry  again,  I  hope — at  fifty!  At  your 
age,  Miss  Warren,  you  would  not  need  to  go 
as  far  as  Verona.  Your  spirits  would  fly  up  at 
the  mere  sight  of  Ostend.  You  would  be 
charmed  with  the  gayety,  the  happy  air  of 
Brussels."  .  .  .  One  of  Mrs.  Warren's  estab- 
lishments was  in  Brussels. 

This  cruel  and  unusual  treatment  of  a  cul- 
tured gentleman  puzzled  and  dismayed  the  un- 
suspecting spectators.  It  seemed  as  if  their  own 
better  nature  were  being  attacked — they  did 
not  grasp  that  in  his  savage  thirst  to  sweep 
away  the  sentimentalities  with  which  nice  peo- 
ple drape  unpleasant  facts  he  appeared  to  be 
trying  to  smash  the  nice  people  themselves. 

In  the  decade  since  Mr.  Shaw's  plays  first 
began  to  stir  things  up  we  have  grown  used  to 
this  trick  and  rather  to  like  it.  The  stage  is  al- 
ways a  good  deal  behind  life — it  has  merely 
been  a  matter  of  catching  partly  up. 

There  was  surely  enough  contrast,  for  in- 
stance, between  the  thinking,  capable,  En- 

[38] 


Mr.  Shaw  Revisited 


glish  or  American  woman  of  the  day  and  the 
sort  of  tame  white  rabbit  she  is  often  assumed 
to  be  in  novels  and  plays,  to  justify  such  a 
farce  as  "Man  and  Superman."  That  woman  is 
always  the  pursuer  and  man  the  pursued,  and 
in  the  fulfilling  of  her  task  of  perpetuating  the 
race  she  devours  the  casual  masculine  means 
to  this  end  as  relentlessly  as  the  tigress  licks 
up  a  mutton  chop,  is  no  more  than  the  farcical 
overaccenting  of  a  truth  for  the  purpose  of 
driving  it  home. 

Poor  moonstruck  little  Tavy  in  the  play, 
regarding  himself  as  the  protector  of  Ann,  a 
woman  with  ten  times  his  vitality,  intelli- 
gence, and  sense  of  humor,  is  matched  in  real 
life  every  day  by  the  sort  of  vast,  fatuous, 
self-important  male  who,  in  spite  of  being 
managed,  supplied  with  ideas,  and  sent  down 
to  his  office  every  morning  by  his  wife  like  a 
boy  to  school — refers  to  the  other  side  of  his 
household  as  "the  little  wife." 

Mr.  Shaw  doubtless  had  no  more  intention 
of  waking  up  the  night  after  his  play  was  pro- 
duced and  finding  the  universe  engaged  in 
general  hare-and-hound  chase,  with  the  gentler 
sex  yelping  in  pursuit  of  the  wild-eyed  males, 

[39] 


Second  Nights 


than  he  had  of  denying  woman's  share  in  mak- 
ing the  world  go  round,  when  Tanner  advises 
Octavius,  after  the  latter's  wail  that  he  can't 
write  without  inspiration  and  nobody  can  give 
it  to  him  but  Ann,  "Well,  hadn't  you  better 
get  it  from  her  at  a  safe  distance?  Petrarch 
didn't  see  half  as  much  of  Laura,  nor  Dante  of 
Beatrice,  as  you  see  of  Ann  now,  and  yet  they 
wrote  first-rate  poetry — at  least,  so  I  am  told." 

He  was  writing  satire,  making  points  where 
he  could,  and  he  found  a  hole  in  the  armor  here. 
Indeed,  if  we  take  the  trouble  to  read  his  pref- 
ace we  find  our  Desperate  Desmond  saying 
almost  diffidently:  "I  plank  down  my  view 
of  the  existing  relation  of  man  to  woman  in 
the  most  highly  civilized  society  for  what  it  is 
worth.  It  is  a  view  like  any  other  view,  and  no 
more;  neither  true  nor  false,  but  I  hope  a  way 
of  looking  at  the  subject  which  throws  into 
the  familiar  order  of  cause  and  effect  a  suffi- 
cient body  of  fact  and  experience  to  be  inter- 
esting." 

With  all  their  quick  jabs,  there  was  some- 
thing very  jolly  and  stirring  in  the  first  effect 
of  his  plays — when  has  the  theatre  seemed  so 
live  and  indispensable  a  place  as  when  "Man 

[40] 


Mr.  Shaw  Revisited 


and  Superman"  and  "You  Never  Can  Tell" 
first  appeared? — a  feeling  of  being  somehow 
rejuvenated  and  released,  the  feeling  which 
makes  all  revolution  popular.  Down  with  the 
bigwigs — we've  been  burning  incense  to  them 
too  long !  Overboard  with  these  tyrannical  con- 
ventions which  keep  us  from  acting  according 
to  our  own  wills  and  common  sense.  We'll 
"stand  up  to  the  facts"  and  be  captains  of 
our  souls. 

As  drama,  his  plays  are  not  important. 
Stripped  of  their  witty  lines,  which  often  might 
as  well  be  delivered  by  one  person  as  another, 
and  their  quaint  characterization,  which  often 
consists  in  putting  Mr.  Shaw's  sophisticated 
ideas  in  the  mouth  of  some  one  who  in  actual 
life  would  never  have  had  them — stripped,  in 
short,  of  the  things  which  might  have  come 
from  a  novelist  or  satirical  essayist  as  well  as 
from  a  playwright,  not  much  is  left.  And,  of 
course,  Mr.  Shaw  frankly  admits  this,  and 
with  characteristic  cheerfulness  assures  us 
that  all  his  apparently  novel  situations  are 
borrowed  from  the  theatrical  rag-bag. 

It  is  also  true  that  all  these  anti-idealists 
and  individualists,  Mr.  Shaw  as  well  as  the 

[41 1 


Second  Nights 


very  different  Ibsen,  in  doing  away  with  con- 
ventional ideas  would  do  away  with  a  lot  of 
labor-saving  machinery  which  society  has  per- 
fected to  make  easier  the  business  of  living. 
A  "bowler"  hat  or  a  hobble-skirt  may  be 
absurd,  yet  if  a  hundred  million  Americans 
each  had  to  work  out  a  rational  dress  before 
going  down-town  in  the  morning  life  would  be 
immensely  more  complicated.  And,  of  course, 
this  would  be  even  more  true  in  the  region  of 
morals  if  we  had  to  act  as  if  each  case  were 
new  and  unique  and  stop  and  figure  out  each 
time  whether  we  really  ought  to  take  the  dia- 
mond necklace  without  paying  for  it,  or  run 
away  with  the  other  man's  wife,  or  shoot  the 
actor  who  bores  us. 

It  is  also  true  that  men  with  highly  active, 
vigorous  minds  like  Mr.  Shaw's,  accustomed  to 
working  with  ideas  instead  of  more  or  less  tire- 
some material  things,  forget  or  do  not  under- 
stand the  average  man's  need  of  the  romantic 
illusions  which  seem  to  him  so  cheap  and  irra- 
tional. The  intense  patriotism,  for  instance,  of 
some  prairie  "boom"  town — the  quite  absurd 
notion  that  it  is  the  best  town,  in  the  best 
county,  in  the  best  State,  in  the  best  of  all  pos- 

[42] 


Mr.  Shaw  Revisited 


sible  countries — gives  its  ordinary  citizens  the 
stimulus  they  need  to  make  it,  if  not  the  best, 
at  least  a  good  deal  better  than  it  might  other- 
wise be.  There  is  something  in  human  nature 
which  demands  these  radiant  fancy  pictures. 
We  will  have  our  cavalry  hero  whether  or  no 
his  horse  is  running  away  with  him. 

On  the  other  hand,  of  course,  ideals  must  be 
kept  brushed  up,  and  now  and  then  changed 
for  new  ones.  They  quickly  become  dusty.  It 
is  here  that  iconoclasts  are  useful.  Mr.  Shaw 
brought  a  lot  of  new  ideas  into  the  theatre 

"no  doubt  I  seem  prodigiously  clever  to 
those  who  have  never  hopped  hungry  and 
curious  across  the  fields  of  philosophy,  politics, 
and  art"  —and  if  his  smashing  statements  of 
what's  what  do  not  always  seem,  later  on,  to 
be  so  true,  at  least  he  woke  people  up. 

No  doubt  he  talks  now  and  then  just  to 
hear  himself  talk,  because  he  does  it  so  well. 
The  amusing  but  rather  ridiculous  comments 
he  occasionally  makes  in  the  newspapers  on 
happenings  in  America  suggest  a  tendency 
which  he  may  be  following  at  other  times, 
when,  because  of  the  unfamiliarity  of  the  ma- 
terial in  hand,  the  weak  points  in  his  argument 

[43 1 


Second  Nights 


are  not  so  apparent.  Yet  when  he  made  Don 
Juan  say,  in  "Man  and  Superman,"  that  "as 
long  as  he  could  conceive  of  something  better 
than  himself,  he  couldn't  be  easy  unless  he  was 
striving  to  bring  it  into  existence  or  clear  the 
way  for  it,"  he  was  undoubtedly  describing 
his  own  state  of  mind.  One  cannot  imagine 
Mr.  Shaw  taking  his  work  frivolously  enough 
merely  to  write  what  "the  public  wants"  al- 
though he  is  clever  enough  to  write  any  kind 
of  thing  whatsoever.  He  is  always  lambast- 
ing the  public  rather  than  truckling  to  it, 
keeping  himself  up  to  the  scratch,  and  looking 
for  desirable  trouble. 

His  cheerfulness  and  vim  cannot  be  escaped. 
He  is  always  in  training  and  fit,  never  de- 
pressed nor  depressing.  There  is  more  hopeful- 
ness in  the  bitterest  of  his  attacks  than  in  most 
people's  mealy  optimism,  and  it  might  well  be 
more  stimulating  to  be  told,  in  his  way,  to 
wear  out,  cast  one's  self  on  the  scrap-heap  and 
let  one's  eternal  life  take  care  of  itself,  than  to 
listen  to  more  namby-pamby  philosophers'  as- 
surances of  immortality. 

This  ability  to  take  care  of  himself  often  re- 
duces his  habit  of  blowing  his  own  horn  to  a 

[44] 


Mr.  Shaw  Revisited 


not  unlikable  mannerism.  We  don't  so  much 
mind  bluffing  if,  as  we  say,  one  "can  get 
away  with  it." 

Prefaces  he  wrote  because  he  could  write 
them.  ''The  reason  most  dramatists  do  not 
publish  their  plays  with  prefaces  is  that  they 
cannot  write  them,  the  business  of  intellectu- 
ally conscious  philosopher  and  skilled  critic 
being  no  part  of  the  playwright's  craft" — 
and  that  was  true. 

"I  have  no  disabilities  to  plead.  Produce  me 
your  best  critic  and  I  will  criticise  his  head 
off"  —and  that  was  true,  too.  And  in  "Fanny's 
First  Play"  Mr.  Shaw  stood  them  up  in  a 
row  and  punctured  them  like  toy  balloons. 
Some  one  suggesting  that  his  noisy  methods 
are  those  of  a  charlatan,  Mr.  Shaw  at  once 
agrees.  "I  am  well  aware  that  the  ordinary 
British  citizen  requires  a  profession  of  sham 
from  all  mountebanks  by  way  of  homage  to 
the  sanctity  of  the  ignoble  private  life  to  which 
he  is  condemned  by  his  incapacity  for  public 
life.  ...  I  leave  the  delicacies  of  retirement 
to  those  who  are  gentlemen  first  and  literary 
workmen  afterward.  The  cart  and  trumpet  for 
me." 

[45  1 


Second  Nights 


One  can  fancy  days  when  the  desire  to 
emulate  the  violet  must  almost  overcome  Mr. 
Shaw;  when  the  dream  of  sagging  half  an 
inch,  admitting  that  he  isn't  sure,  that  pos- 
sibly the  other  man  knows  better,  must  steal 
o'er  his  senses,  piercing  sweet  as  the  sailor's 
dreams  of  home.  Yet  all  such  soft  surrenders 
must  sternly  be  put  aside.  The  imperturbably 
impudent  comedian  must  continue  impudent 
and  imperturbable  or  the  public  will  have  none 
of  him. 

We  can  look  back  at  him  now,  starting  out 
on  his  audacious  adventure,  with  the  sporting 
sympathy  bestowed  on  one  who  burns  his 
bridges  behind  him  as  he  marches  into  the 
enemy's  country.  Like  a  man  walking  a  tight 
rope  or  offering  to  box  any  one  who  will  come 
up  into  the  ring,  there  was  no  sitting  down 
nor  sidestepping  for  Mr.  Shaw.  He  has  made 
life  much  more  amusing  than  it  would  have 
been,  and  from  their  undistinguished  but  com- 
fortable places  on  the  ground  the  crowd  can 
look  up  now,  none  the  worse  for  their  knocks, 
and  join  in  the  general  applause. 


[46] 


III 

NOVELLI  AND  OUR  OWN 


\VHEN  Ermete  Novelli,  the  Italian,  ap- 
peared here  a  few  years  ago  one  was  struck 
with  the  fact  that  he  belonged  to  a  school  of 
actors  and  of  acting  different  from  what  we 
are  accustomed  to  in  America.  For  one 
thing,  he  could  act.  I  do  not  mean  that  the 
pleasure  he  gave  an  English-speaking  audi- 
ence was  such  as  to  blot  out  the  memory  of 
our  own  players  —  indeed,  I  might  have  pre- 
ferred Mr.  Sothern's  "Hamlet"  to  Novelli's, 
and  would  almost  rather  have  seen  "  Brown 
of  Harvard"  than  sit  again  from  eight  o'clock 
until  midnight  through  Novelli's  "Othello" 
merely  that  in  versatility  and  facile  technic 
this  Italian  virtuoso  knew  more  in  a  minute, 
as  the  saying  goes,  than  most  of  our  actors 
would  in  a  thousand  years. 

Much  of  this  effect  was  due,  of  course,  to 
his  different  race  and  the  Italian  habit  of 
fluent  gesture,  but  the  more  interesting  part 
lay  in  what  seemed  to  be  his  own  intention 

[47] 


Second  Nights 


and  state  of  mind.  For  here  was  a  man  who 
was,  first  of  all  and  unblushingly,  a  play- 
actor. He  was  interesting  for  what  he  did  on 
the  stage,  and  not  because  he  was  a  knight, 
or  might  or  might  not  be  nice  to  his  family, 
or  had  a  palace  in  Venice  or  a  house  on  River- 
side Drive,  or  was  a  perfect  gentleman  and 
scholar  off  the  stage,  and  really  just  as  nice 
as  we.  He  was  born  for  the  part.  He  had  a 
long,  hooked  nose,  high  cheek-bones,  deep-set, 
commanding  eyes,  and  a  broad,  mobile  mouth. 
His  fingers,  even  the  thumb,  were  covered  with 
rings.  He  was  a  professional,  proud  to  show  his 
skill,  and  it  much  depressed  him  that,  during 
his  short  stay  here,  out  of  a  repertory  of  a 
hundred  or  more  plays,  he  could  but  present 
practically  all  of  the  great  Shakespearian 
roles,  a  number  of  comedies,  and  a  few  de- 
tached monologues. 

He  reminded  one  of  the  actor  in  one  of  Mr. 
Gouverneur  Morris's  stories  who  could  count 
up  to  ten  in  Arabic,  in  a  sad  voice,  and  say, 
'That  is  how  I  lost  her,"  and  make  ten  tears 
roll  down  his  audience's  face;  then  count 
over  again  in  a  comic  fashion  and  make  them 
roar  with  laughter;  who,  as  he  was  dying, 

[48] 


Novelli  and  Our  Own 


said,  "Look,  I  am  improving,  I  am  getting  bet- 
ter," joked  like  one  who  had  passed  a  serious 
climax,  and  then  exclaimed  hilariously,  "I  can 
still  do  it!"  and  died. 

In  his  virtuosity,  in  the  pathological  ac- 
curacy on  which  his  realism  was  built,  in  his 
behavior  toward  his  audience  there  was  much 
of  this  "  I-can-still-do-it "  business  in  Ermete 
Novelli.  When  he  had  a  long  soliloquy  he 
generally  came  down  to  the  footlights  and 
talked  directly  at  the  orchestra.  He  did  not 
hesitate  himself,  nor  forbid  his  company,  to 
step  out  of  the  part,  and  bow  to  applause 
when  this  happened  to  break  forth  in  the 
middle  of  a  scene.  After  his  delightful  "  Papa 
Lebonnard,"  instead  of  sending  his  audience 
home  with  the  impression  of  the  quaint,  al- 
together likable  old  bourgeois  father  intact  in 
their  minds,  he  must  needs  hold  them  for  half 
an  hour  until  he  could  come  out  in  his  own 
street  clothes,  with  derby  hat  and  stick,  and, 
leaning  on  his  cane,  just  over  the  footlights 
after  the  manner  of  the  music-hall  imper- 
sonator, "get  off"  a  rather  commonplace, 
humorous  monologue,  describing  types  of 
playgoers  in  the  average  audience.  Probably 

[49] 


Second  Nights 


you  would  rather  have  had  your  nice  old 
clock-maker  without  this  jarring  postscript, 
and  I  must  confess  that  I  much  prefer  to  have 
actors  suppress  their  desire  to  bow  to  curtain 
calls,  at  least  until  the  curtain  goes  down. 
Mr.  Novelli  and  his  colleagues  might  assert, 
however,  that  this  merely  proved  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  lack  of  that  fluid  wit  and  quick  ar- 
tistic instinct  which  permits  the  Latin  to 
shift  back  and  forth  constantly  between  reality 
and  the  conventions  of  the  stage.  Each  to 
his  taste. 

In  his  own  country  Novelli,  we  are  told, 
is  best  known  as  a  character  and  comedy 
actor,  and  in  spite  of  the  cleverness  with 
which  he  "got  away,"  so  to  speak,  with  "Ham- 
let," "Lear,"  and  "Othello,"  his  work  here 
confirmed  the  impression  that  comedy  is  his 
natural  and  most  successful  vein.  The  archi- 
tecture of  his  face — the  long  nose,  high  cheek- 
bones, and  broad,  mobile  mouth,  spreading  so 
easily  into  the  comedian's  grin;  the  husky 
voice — powerful,  but  without  variety  or  res- 
onance— giving  to  the  liquid  Italian  a  curi- 
ously muffled,  almost  Yiddish,  accent  at  times; 
his  mannerisms,  that  hoarse,  half-ironical  "Ah- 

[  50] 


Novelli  and  Our  Own 


ha!  Ah-ha!"  and  that  raising  of  the  hands, 
palms  outward,  with  lifted  eyebrows,  then 
clasping  them  together  again — all  these  things 
seemed  more  especially  the  equipment  of  a 
comedian.  His  "Hamlet,"  frankly  mad  much 
of  the  time,  lacked  fineness,  grace,  and  all 
that  intellectual  quality  which,  for  example, 
gives  the  "Hamlet"  of  Mr.  Forbes-Robertson 
such  distinction. 

His  "Othello,"  a  marvel  in  make-up,  was 
turgid  and  monotonous,  toward  the  end  de- 
generating into  mere  howling.  The  death  scene, 
crowded  with  pathological  detail,  with  the 
Moor  rolling  about  on  the  floor,  sawing  his 
throat  with  a  dagger,  choking,  and  cough- 
ing horribly,  sent  the  spectators  away,  con- 
vinced only  that  Othello  had  lungs,  a  thorax, 
a  great  deal  of  blood,  and  took  an  unnecessary 
time  in  dying. 

In  "The  Merchant  of  Venice,"  however, 
his  close  observation  and  unquenchable  com- 
edy sense  brought  about  a  happier  result 
than  our  Shakespearian  performers  often  per- 
mit us  to  see.  This  Shylock  was  a  man,  and 
not  the  solemn  allegory  into  which  generations 
of  awestruck  contemplation  have  conven- 

[51 1 


Second  Nights 


tionalized  Shakespeare's  Jew — a  very  vigor- 
ous, vivid,  cheerful  personality;  not  without  a 
lively  sense  of  humor,  even,  and  a  quick,  sar- 
donic grin ;  one  who  even  went  trundling  round 
the  stage  in  the  drollest  and  most  plausible 
sort  of  dervish's  dance  when  he  heard  that 
Antonio's  galleons  had  been  lost. 

Even  when  failing  to  realize  our  ideas  of 
Shakespeare,  Novelli's  performances  were  con- 
stant processions  of  facile  technic,  delight- 
ful to  watch  for  their  mere  physical  fluidity. 
Such,  for  instance,  was  that  little  formula  of 
business  accompanying  the  "Words,  words, 
words"  which  answer  Polonius's  "What  do 
you  read,  my  lord?"  "Parole"  said  Hamlet, 
eying  the  old  man  mysteriously,  as  he  de- 
liberately tore  a  leaf  out  of  his  book  and  let 
it  flutter  to  the  floor.  "Parole"  he  repeated 
with  a  slightly  different  inflection,  tearing  out 
another  leaf  and  tossing  it  away.  Then  he 
tore  out  a  third  leaf,  flipped  it  more  disdain- 
fully aside,  gestured  once  down,  once  up, 
with  a  satirical  "Pouf,"  then  spread  out  both 
hands,  palms  outward,  lifting  his  shoulders 
and  eyebrows  at  the  same  time.  "Parole!" 
said  he.  There  is  a  certain  fascination  about 

1 52] 


Novelli  and  Our  Own 


such  facile  claptrap,  which  any  one  fond  of 
acting  can  watch  till  the  cows  come  home. 

We  should  scarcely  find  among  our  players 
the  like  of  this  curious  mingling  of  genius  and 
the  tricks  of  Punchinello,  this  smiling  readi- 
ness to  step  down  at  any  moment  and,  so  to 
speak,  borrow  a  few  handkerchiefs  and  a 
diamond  ring  from  the  audience,  or  pull  a 
white  rabbit  out  of  a  hat.  For  this  our  English- 
speaking  actors  are  far  too  solemn  and  respect- 
able. All  questions  of  art  aside,  the  role  of 
strolling  player  and  mountebank  does  not 
become  us.  Though  we  beat  the  big  drum  and 
call  the  people  to  our  tent,  we  would  have 
them  know  that  we  sleep  in  a  numbered  house 
and  have  our  name  in  the  telephone  book, 
and  we  will  be  knighted — or  have  a  motor-car 
—though  we  bury  Shakespeare  under  scenery 
to  do  it.  An  essayist  might  write  very  enter- 
tainingly of  these  tastes  and  differences — as 
many  doubtless  have  done  already — how  much 
our  qualms  at  such  charlatanism  as  Novelli's 
are  due  to  superior  taste  and  how  much  to  mere 
self-consciousness ;  where  self-respect  leaves  off 
and  snobbishness  begins;  how  much  our  zeal 
for  respectability  is  due  to  lack  of  artistic  en- 

[53 1 


Second  Nights 


thusiasm  and  the  natural  impulse  to  follow  a 
world  the  more  vigorous  minds  in  which  are 
devoted  to  making  money,  how  much  to  a 
more  or  less  unconscious  but  generally  whole- 
some desire  to  live  up  to  the  democratic 
theory  that  the  artist  should  also  be  a  good 
citizen. 

Equally  in  vain  would  be  the  search  among 
our  players,  or  through  the  memories  of  recent 
years — if  one  excepts,  perhaps,  Mr.  Richard 
Mansfield,  of  whom  I  shall  presently  speak— 
for  another  figure  so  robust,  rational,  many- 
colored,  and  bright.  The  high  and  sounding 
names  seem  gone  from  our  stage  with  the 
plays  which,  in  a  way,  went  with  them.  The 
canvases  are  smaller  now,  the  outlines  more 
scrupulously  defined,  the  colors  at  once  more 
carefully  chosen  and  more  biting.  The  spec- 
tator is  pierced  rather  than  swept  away. 
There  is  no  lack  of  good  acting— at  what 
period  in  the  history  of  our  stage,  for  instance, 
could  have  been  found  a  play  more  complete 
and  perfect  than  Mr.  Galsworthy's  "The 
Pigeon"  as  first  acted  at  The  Little  Theatre? 
—yet  in  quiet  realism  of  this  sort  the  player's 
art  is  merged  and  hidden  in  the  stuff  he  works 

[54] 


Novelli  and  Our  Own 


with;  his  task,  too,  becomes  one  of  elimina- 
tion and  austerity.  Many,  perhaps  most,  of 
those  who  saw  "The  Pigeon"  could  not  have 
told  six  months  afterward  a  single  actor's 
name.  It  is  a  case  of  2+2=4,  a^  working  to- 
gether and  every  stroke  counting;  no  splen- 
did, splashing  hit  or  miss,  no  dizzy  prod- 
igality. 

Plays  of  this  nature  call  for  a  new  kind  of 
acting  and  possibly  a  new  kind  of  actor. 
And  whether  it  be  due  to  this  or  to  the  fact 
that  there  is  none  among  us  strong  enough  to 
make  his  own  surroundings  instead  of  being 
made  by  them — would  Booth  still  be  Booth  if 
he  were  alive  to-day? — certain  it  is  that  no 
giant  strides  forth  in  these  days  to  ask  as  his 
right  our  universal  applause. 

In  plays  depending  on  character  and  natu- 
ralistic appearances  rather  than  on  sound  and 
fury,  the  actor's  success  is  largely  determined 
by  his  natural  fitness  for  the  part,  and  a 
player  superb  to-day  may  to-morrow  be  quite 
out  of  the  picture.  There  is  no  general  manner 
or  method  with  which  to  bungle  through  pass- 
ably, as  was  not  infrequently  the  privilege  of 
the  robust  gentlemen  of  the  old  Shakespearian 

[  55  ] 


Second  Nights 


school.  A  young  German-American,  Mr.  Frank 
Reicher,  plays,  for  instance,  the  straw  man 
come  to  life  in  Mr.  Percy  Mackaye's  "Scare- 
crow." Mr.  Reicher  has  a  finely  cut,  rather 
poetical  face,  a  sensitive  temperament,  move- 
ments somewhat  constrained  and  wooden, 
and  a  slight  accent.  The  combination  of  these 
qualities  made  his  "Scarecrow"  a  thing  of  very 
delicate  and  perfect  art.  His  very  defects  be- 
came merits,  and  what  might  have  seemed  a 
lack  of  flexibility  in  another  role  only  helped 
here  to  give  the  imitation  man  the  proper  touch 
of  unreality.  When  Mr.  Reicher  attempted  to 
play  the  gallant  Marlow  to  Miss  Annie  Rus- 
sell's Miss  Hardcastle  in  "She  Stoops  to  Con- 
quer," he  was,  as  might  have  been  expected, 
very  unlike  the  character  indeed.  Mr.  Nor- 
man McKinnell,  as  the  hard-fisted  old  mill 
owner  in  "Rutherford  and  Son,"  who  sac- 
rificed every  member  of  his  family  in  one  way 
or  another  in  order  that  Rutherford  might 
thrive,  held  the  spectator  in  a  grip  rarely  felt 
in  the  theatre.  So  complete  a  symbol  was  he 
of  that  flinty,  grinding,  joyless  life — the  very 
pictures  on  the  wall  and  the  grim  old  mantel- 
piece seemed  matched  by  the  lines  of  his  face 

[  56] 


Novelli  and  Our  Own 


—that  the  audience  was  one  of  that  crushed 
and  cowering  family  and  lived  their  cheerless 
life.  The  greatest  actor  that  ever  lived  might 
not  have  done  more  in  the  part — nor  in  a  score 
of  others  which  will  come  at  once  to  every 
one's  mind— yet  one  would  hesitate  to  call 
Mr.  McKinnell  "great."  The  happy  synthesis 
of  scene,  lines,  action,  and  character  might 
never  fall  to  him  again. 

Looking  back  over  a  vista  of  theatre  nights, 
it  is  bright  milestones  such  as  these  which 
shine  out  from  the  general  blur—  "bits"  here 
and  there  rather  than,  as  in  the  case  of  an 
actor  like  Novelli,  a  long  gallery  of  portraits 
by  the  same  hand.  The  star  system  and  our 
habit  of  petrifying  the  artist  as  soon  as  pos- 
sible in  the  particular  shape  in  which  he 
pleased  the  public  first,  is,  of  course,  partially 
responsible  for  this.  Mr.  John  Drew's  stage 
personality  is  as  fixed  as  the  Washington 
Monument,  but,  as  we  have  few  actors  suited 
to  polite  comedy,  petrification  in  this  instance 
is  less  mournful  than  it  might  be.  In  Mr. 
Drew's  case,  indeed,  we  do  look  down  a  long 
gallery  of  portraits — albeit  they  are  all  of  the 
same  kind.  What  varied  notes  Mr.  David 

[  57] 


Second  Nights 


Warfield  might  have  struck,  beyond  that  key 
of  homely  pathos  which  he  plays  with  such 
moving  skill,  may  never  be  known,  perhaps, 
inasmuch  as  the  exigencies  of  piling  up  a  for- 
tune appear  to  demand  that  he  strike  but  one. 
Circumscribed  as  is  his  field,  he  is  master  of 
his  audience  within  it,  and  he  can  hold  them 
for  seconds  at  a  time  without  a  word,  so 
silent  that  the  proverbial  pin  could  be  heard 
to  drop.  His  is  acting  one  remembers,  as  one 
does  the  subtle,  suave,  insinuating  villainy  of 
Mr.  George  Arliss  or — to  jump  to  the  other 
extreme — the  drollery  of  Mr.  William  Collier. 
Mr.  Collier  is  one  of  the  surest  of  our  come- 
dians. His  very  movements  are  funny,  though 
the  spectator  might  be  hard  put  to  explain 
why,  and  the  dry,  quick,  almost  diffident 
fashion  in  which  he  makes  his  points  some- 
times gives  to  an  ordinary  pun  the  quality 
of  exquisite  wit.  "How  will  you  have  your 
eggs  cooked?"  "Oh,  any  way."  "That  is  the 
way  they  are  cooked."  "Don't  you  drink 
anything?"  :'Yes — anything,"  says  Mr.  Col- 
lier, and  in  such  a  way  that  the  ancient  sub- 
ject of  alcohol  seems  fresh  as  the  flowers  of 
May. 

[  58  I 


Novelli  and  Our  Own 


Mr.  William  Gillette  had  a  keen  stage  sense 
and  was  able  to  give  to  the  most  trivial  things 
an  air  of  mystery  and  importance.  The  tele- 
graph operator  in  "Secret  Service"  and  the 
part  of  Sherlock  Holmes  exactly  fitted  his  sup- 
pressed, laconic  style — his  manner  of  suggest- 
ing that  underneath  that  quiet,  casual  mask 
there  were  tremendous  things  afoot.  He  was 
at  his  best  in  the  tense  and  creepy,  and  it  is 
difficult  to  visualize  Conan  Doyle's  famous  de- 
tective in  any  other  shape  than  that  of  Mr. 
Gillette.  The  theatric  quality  of  his  acting, 
quiet  though  it  was,  its  association,  so  to 
speak,  with  green  light  and  shiver  music  from 
the  violins,  was  likely  to  put  Mr.  Gillette  out 
of  the  picture  when  he  tried  something  out  of 
his  peculiar  vein. 

When,  in  Bernstein's  "Samson,"  for  in- 
stance, the  suppressed  passion  \vhich  our 
austere,  acidulous  Sherlock  was  always  sug- 
gesting actually  had  to  come  to  the  surface, 
and  Mr.  Gillette  to  howl  into  another  man's 
face  and  finally  throw  him  across  a  table  and 
choke  him,  the  audience  suffered  a  quick  pang 
of  disappointment.  Such  behavior  was  almost 
unseemly,  and  no  released  emotion,  however 

f  59  1 


Second  Nights 


violent,  could  but  seem  tame  and  insufficient 
in  contrast  to  that  which  appeared  to  be  with 
difficulty  suppressed,  so  long  as  he  remained 
taut  and  pale  and  inscrutable.  When  Mr. 
Gillette  essayed  sentimental  comedy  in  his 
own  play,  "Clarice,"  he  fell  into  difficulties 
at  the  other  end  of  the  scale.  That  even,  me- 
tallic utterance,  and  the  trick  of  repeating,  in 
a  preoccupied  fashion,  the  same  thought — an 
effective  method  in  its  proper  place  of  sug- 
gesting that  under  a  quiet  exterior  the  speaker 
is  planning  mighty  things  and  is  presently 
about  to  surprise  us — became,  in  "Clarice,"  a 
mannerism. 

Thus  if  Doctor  Carrington  wanted  to  convey 
to  Clarice  the  notion  that  2+2=4,  ^  would 
reach  the  audience  somewhat  in  this  wise  (A 
far-away  metallic  falsetto,  speaking  without  peri- 
ods in  the  same  key) :"  Two  and  two  are  four,  you 
know.  Oh,  yes — they  are — They  couldn't  be 
five-you-know-that-wouldn't-do- at- all -would 
it — (Mr.  Gillette  striding  rapidly  away,  his  fore- 
head wrinkled  up  like  Mr.  Arthur  Brisbane  at  his 
very  cleverest,  the  metallic  falsetto  fading  mysteri- 
ously] No no!  No— no— no 

The  mannerism  had  the  effect  of  constantly 

[60] 


Novelli  and  Our  Own 


giving  mysterious  pseudo-significance  to  ob- 
servations which  were  mere  statements  of  fact, 
until  one  rebelled  at  the  forced  air  of  suspense. 
Mr.  Frank  Keenan  is  another  player  with 
the  knack  of  giving  creepiness  and  bite  to  the 
smallest  details,  and  rather  more  than  Mr. 
Gillette's  acting  versatility.  Although  he  has 
generally  appeared  in  secondary  parts,  no 
American  player,  perhaps,  is  more  gifted — and 
it  seems  to  be  a  gift  rather  than  something  ac- 
quired— with  the  knack  of  "getting  things 
over."  His  style  is  naturalistic  and  especially 
suited  to  quick,  sinister,  melodramatic  "bits'* 
—the  gambler  with  the  white  "poker  face"  in 
the  "Girl  of  the  Golden  West,"  for  instance- 
yet  he  can  put  on  a  toga  and  play  a  Roman 
with  the  rest  of  them.  Here,  to  be  sure,  his 
playing  lacks  breadth  and  nobility;  in  com- 
parison with  the  old-school  tradition  of  gran- 
diloquence, he  seems  a  trifle  colloquial  and  close 
to  the  ground.  Yet,  between  sticking  close  to 
the  ground  and  being  real,  and  soaring  aloft 
to  be  merely  windy — as  our  modern  Shake- 
spearians  are  likely  to  do — there  seems  little 
to  choose.  Shakespeare's  plays  are  drama, 
after  all,  and  not  mere  exercises  in  elocution. 
[61  ] 


Second  Nights 


I  was  impressed  with  this  while  watching 
Mr.  Faversham's  production  of  "Julius  Cae- 
sar," in  which  Mr.  Keenan  played  Cassius 
and  Mr.  Faversham,  Antony.  It  was  an  elec- 
tion-day matinee  and  outside  the  country  was 
deciding  between  Mr.  Wilson,  Mr.  Taft,  and 
Colonel  Roosevelt. 

"Why,  man,"  rasped  Cassius,  "he  doth  be- 
stride the  narrow  world  like  a  Colossus.  In  the 
name  of  all  the  gods  at  once,  when  could  they 
say  till  now,  that  talked  of  Rome,  that  her 
wide  walls  encompassed  but  one  man?"  The 
force  of  the  lines  was  increased,  of  course,  by 
what  was  in  the  air,  yet  it  was  in  good  part 
Mr.  Keenan's  gift  of  reality  that  brought  them 
home  to  the  spectator  as  if  he  were  listening 
to  a  campaign  orator  on  the  nearest  street 
corner,  or  an  editorial  from  the  New  York 
Evening  Post. 

The  feeling  of  concreteness  and  vitality 
which  this  scene  of  Mr.  Keenan's  gave  was 
more  agreeable  to  me,  at  least,  than  anything 
else  in  the  play.  Mr.  Tyrone  Power,  as  Brutus, 
seemed  to  be  depending  a  little  too  much  on 
the  magnetic  sound  of  his  voice — and  a  most 
unusual  organ  it  is,  as  he  has  many  times  re- 

[62] 


Novelli  and  Our  Own 


vealed — and  not  thinking  overmuch  of  what 
the  lines  were  intended  to  convey.  And  a  some- 
what similar  lack  was  felt  in  Mr.  Faversham's 
Antony,  vivid  and  pleasing  as  it  was  and 
amiably  disposed  as  the  spectator  must  inevi- 
tably be  to  the  actor  who  had  the  artistic 
energy  to  put  on  the  play.  The  noble  Roman, 
Mr.  Faversham  was  always.  He  has  an  unu- 
sually fine  figure  and  carriage,  a  rich  and  melo- 
dious utterance.  The  picture  he  makes  not 
only  has  dignity  but  a  vivid,  youthful  quality 
which  is  undeniably  attractive.  The  lack  is 
that  of  light  and  shade,  of  the  suggestion  of 
intellectuality  behind  that  fixed  expression, 
which  might  almost  have  been  that  of  a  man 
looking  from  a  car  window  or  driving  an  auto- 
mobile— for  Antony,  although  a  Roman,  was  a 
sensitive,  clever,  and  subtle  man. 

Mr.  Faversham,  indeed,  lacks  precisely  the 
thing  Mr.  Keenan  has — the  gift  for  natural- 
istic detail,  for  giving  his  work  that  curious, 
indefinable  theatric  bite — and  he  possesses 
most  of  the  lofty  and  spacious  grace  which 
Mr.  Keenan  has  been  denied.  He  used  to  be  a 
matinee  idol,  with  a  bull-terrier  and  at  least 
a  suggestion  of  that  air  of  accurate  clothes  and 

[  63  1 


Second  Nights 


ineradicable  virility  which  the  matinee  girl  en- 
dows— or  in  those  days  did  endow — her  no- 
tion of  a  Yale  man.  Such  he  might  possibly 
have  continued  to  be,  to  his  material  profit,  and 
it  is  greatly  to  Mr.  Faversham's  credit  and  our 
advantage  that  he  had  the  artistic  energy  to 
develop  his  talents,  or  at  least  to  use  them  in 
the  presentation  of  plays  which  most  popular 
favorites  do  not  think  it  worth  while  to  bother 
with.  His  "Julius  Caesar"  was  only  one  of 
several  such  services.  It  was  Mr.  Faversham 
who  produced  an  English  version  of  Eche- 
garay's  "El  Gran  Galeoto"  under  the  title 
"The  World  and  His  Wife"— the  only  one  of 
the  Spanish  dramatist's  plays  which  most  of 
his  American  audience  had  ever  seen — and 
Stephen  Phillips's  poetic  drama  "Herod" 
both  of  which  efforts  were  worthily  enough 
discharged  to  deserve  the  public's  gratitude. 

With  his  fine  figure  and  voice  and  his 
adaptability  to  the  statuesque  pose  and  large, 
free  gesture,  Mr.  Faversham  might  almost  be 
said  to  have  been  born  too  late — the  theatre 
of  fifty  years  ago  might  have  offered  him  a 
wider  field.  Mr.  Sothern,  on  the  other  hand, 
strikes  one  as  a  contemporary  who  would  pre- 


Novelli  and  Our  Own 


fer  to  be  an  ancient.  Suited  in  physique  and 
sensitive  intelligence,  apparently,  to  modern 
comedy,  he  is  determined  to  play  Shakespeare. 
The  task  is,  to  be  sure,  not  overdone  in  our 
day.  Few  who  attempt  it  have  Mr.  Sothern's 
resources,  material  and  otherwise,  for  placing 
their  personal  contribution  in  an  appropriate 
frame,  and  his  association  with  Miss  Marlowe 
has  so  happily  provided  the  public  both  with 
what  it  ought  to  have  and  what  it  wants,  that 
one  would  scarcely  wish  him  otherwise. 

Looking  at  Mr.  Sothern  as  a  mere  actor^ 
however,  instead  of  a  public  benefactor,  with 
certain  differences  between  the  old  and  new 
styles  of  acting  in  mind,  irrelevant  specula- 
tions as  to  his  entire  appropriateness  for  his 
chosen  roles  will  occasionally  obtrude.  One 
sometimes  feels  that  here  is  a  light  comedian 
lost  to  make  a  somewhat  indifferent  inter- 
preter of  tragedy.  The  weight  of  Shakespearian 
tradition  hangs  heavy  on  him,  and,  despite  his 
intelligence,  grace,  and  beauty  of  diction,  gives 
to  his  feet  a  stagy  drag,  to  every  accent  of  his 
voice  somewhat  of  the  dying  fall.  The  fire  which 
beamed  forth  so  gracefully  in  his  old  romantic 
parts  is  circumscribed  and  dulled.  There  is  a 


Second  Nights 


lack  of  robustness  and  the  full-throated  bass. 
We  have  forever  the  melancholy  Dane,  or 
Romeo  at  his  maddest — and  as  for  Romeo,  I 
have  seen  an  unknown  Romeo  in  a  ten-twenty- 
thirty  stock  company  come  nearer  to  Shake- 
speare than  the  pale  and  drooping  Mr.  Sothern. 
Miss  Marlowe,  on  the  other  hand,  seems  des- 
tined by  nature  for  the  older,  loftier  style. 
There  is  a  noble  simplicity  in  her  face  and 
shape  and  movement,  a  mellowness  and  rich- 
ness which  seem  part  of  an  earlier,  less  ner- 
vous time.  Her  words  and  glance  descend  into 
the  heart  as  well  as  strike  the  eye  and  ear,  and 
we  are  not  so  much  struck  as  enveloped  by  the 
feeling  she  imparts,  and  swept  gratefully  away. 
She  seems  remote  from  our  petty  world — a 
Galatea  come  to  life  with  a  woman's  soul  and 
as  yet  no  knowledge  of  the  little,  noisy  fretful 
things  that  trouble  us.  In  the  gentler  parts, 
although  the  opposite  of  cold,  there  is  yet  a 
childlike  naturalness  in  her  freedom,  an  inno- 
cence unconscious  of  itself,  more  charming 
than  all  the  knowing  refinements.  In  harder 
parts,  even  as  Lady  Macbeth,  though  she  can- 
not be  the  steely  murderess  another  might,  she 
yet  achieves  in  her  own  way  the  effect  of  force, 
[66] 


Novelli  and  Our  Own 


and  the  horror  which  others  might  compel  is 
felt  no  less  for  being  mixed  in  her  case  with 
pity  that  fate  should  thus  have  perverted  this 
amplitude  of  warm,  sweet  womanliness. 

Miss  Marlowe  would  have  fitted  with  little 
trouble  into  Novelli's  company,  playing  the 
heavier  woman's  parts  alongside  that  young 
lady  with  the  voice  of  silver  and  ivory  who 
did  the  lighter  ones — a  fragile,  Botticelli  sort 
of  person,  with  slim  fingers  so  long  that  she 
rather  quaintly  kept  them  tucked  up  on  her 
wrists,  until  in  some  moment  of  emphasis  they 
flashed  out  in  their  astounding  length  and 
taperingness. 

Mrs.  Fiske,  who  has  written  plays  as  well 
as  acted  them,  fought  commercialism,  and 
given  unknown  play-writers  a  hearing— led 
the  stage,  in  short — is  distinctly  of  our  time. 
She  is  a  modern  and  belongs  to  our  restless, 
self-conscious  day.  A  sparkling  comedienne 
whenever  she  wishes  to  be — the  note  of  irony 
is  always  close  to  the  surface  of  her  lines— 
and  possessing  a  dramatic  force  more  pene- 
trating and  mordant  than  any  other  of  our 
players,  her  mission  is  less  to  beguile  than  to 
rouse  and  stir.  She  "makes  us  think"  rather 


Second  Nights 


than  takes  us  to  the  islands  of  the  blest. 
She  is  nearer  Shaw  than  Shakespeare,  and 
her  Juliet  would  be  something  of  a  feminist 
and  reminds  us,  if  but  in  some  latent  tone  of 
her  voice,  that  there  are  such  things  as  tene- 
ment-house commissions  and  workers  for  so- 
cial service.  Her  acting  is  quick,  restless,  and 
piercing,  dynamic  rather  than  broad,  easy, 
and  spacious.  She  stabs  rather  than  carries 
one  along  on  a  pleasant  tide,  and  she  can 
express  more  concentrated  and  pent-up  emo- 
tion in  a  nervous  twitch  of  shoulder  or  lip 
than  most  players  can  reveal  with  waving 
arms  and  torrents  of  concatenated  howls. 

Alia  Nazimova  is  scarcely  "one  of  our  own," 
perhaps,  although  it  was  here  she  learned  the 
language  in  which  she  plays  and  burst  from 
her  rather  sombre  husk  into  the  brilliant 
orchid  she  has  since  become.  She  swept,  a 
sort  of  comet,  into  our  dull  skies.  A  little  band 
of  half-starved  Russian  argonauts  playing 
"The  Chosen  People"  before  an  audience  of 
weeping  Roman  Jews  on  the  lower  East  Side ; 
a  stuffy  box  of  a  theatre,  a  little  farther  up- 
town, with  a  gallery  scarce  higher  than  a 
man's  head,  and  this  strange,  dark-eyed  girl 

[68] 


Novelli  and  Our  Own 


beginning  to  stand  out  from  the  rest;  the 
advance,  by  way  of  a  side-street  playhouse,  to 
the  fringe  of  Broadway;  and  then,  overboard 
with  the  old  companions,  a  new  tongue,  and 
the  single-handed  venture  into  the  shining 
unknown — it  has,  indeed,  been  a  career. 

It  was  her  body  and  the  vivid  strokes  she 
flung  off  with  it  which  startled,  dazzled,  and 
allured.  She  was  a  mermaid,  a  leopard,  with 
the  smooth,  undulating  grace  of  the  one,  the 
other's  lithe,  feline  strength.  She  could  draw 
herself  up  like  a  serpent,  with  a  quick,  bone- 
less heave  that  began  one  knew  not  where, 
until — though  but  of  medium  height — she 
seemed  to  tower  over  all  on  the  stage;  and 
she  could  collapse  all  over,  with  a  shuddering 
rhythm,  like  the  same  serpent,  dead,  and 
thrown  over  a  chair. 

And  with  this  dexterity  she  combined  a 
theatric  instinct  and  a  savage  frankness  com- 
pared to  which  our  ordinary  ways  seemed  cir- 
cumspect and  pale.  Characteristic  was  the 
instant  in  which  her  Hedda  learned  of  Love- 
berg's  suicide.  She  was  seated,  the  long,  black, 
snaky  body  held  erect,  on  her  pale  face  the 
morbid  exaltation  of  believing  that  he  had 


Second  Nights 


killed  himself  "beautifully" —that  is  to  say, 
shot  himself  through  the  heart.  Then  came 
Brack's  rasping:  "Not  in  the  heart— in  the 
bowels."  At  the  word  the  erect  torso,  softly 
strong,  snapped  shut  like  a  jack-knife  and 
her  pale  hands  clutched  convulsively  an 
imagined  wound.  It  was  as  quiet  and  quick 
as  lightning,  yet  fairly  stabbed  one's  physical 
nerves.  It  could  hardly  have  occurred  to  one 
of  our  own  actresses  to  do  this  as  Nazimova 
did  it.  If  it  had  it  might  not  have  seemed 
exactly  "pleasant."  Ibsen's  idea  was  not 
"pleasant." 

With  the  same  vividness  she  can  fill  the 
stage,  or,  at  least,  her  particular  part  of  it 
(for  of  that  Miss  Nazimova  is  rather  careful), 
with  bubbling-over  youth  and  freshness.  The 
laughing  April-wind  animality  of  her  Nora,  in 
her  brisk  Scotch  plaid,  was  irresistible.  Her 
"Oh!  I  am  so  happy!"  with  arms  and  head 
flung  back,  had  all  the  crisp  finality  of  music. 
Her  Hilda  Wangel  burst  into  the  master 
builder's  dingy  workshop — and  his  middle- 
aged  fears — as  clean  and  cruel  as  sunlight. 
The  very  air  shrank  back  before  that  fierce 
vitality.  Her  talent  expresses  itself  in  a  con- 

[70] 


Novelli  and  Our  Own 


tinual  physical  virtuosity  which  startles  and 
thrills,  if  it  rarely  touches  the  nobler  tragic 
note. 

Of  late  she  has  drifted  far  from  her  simple 
beginnings  and  overaccented  the  more  exotic 
side  of  her  personality,  as  if  determined  to 
"run  it  into  the  ground."  In  remoteness  from 
the  life  about  her — from  Mrs.  Fiske,  for  in- 
stance— she  suggests  that  splendid,  older  or- 
chid, Sarah  Bernhardt,  yet  between  these 
two  artificialities  there  are  differences  quite 
as  marked.  Though  Nazimova  paints  posters 
for  posters'  sake,  they  are  filled  with  almost 
pathological  detail.  By  instinct  she  is  a 
naturalist.  The  Divine  Sarah,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  inalterably  romantic.  A  sort  of  emo- 
tional moonlight  would  forever  surround  her, 
though  she  were  playing  in  the  blazing  desert. 
She  speaks  or  smiles,  and  there  is  music  in  the 
air.  Much  of  her  art  resembles  that  of  the 
older  opera,  in  which  the  consumptive  heroine 
sings  sweetest — and  most  elaborately — ere  she 
dies,  yet  it  rarely  fails  to  thrill,  to  touch  the 
crowd's  sympathy  and  tears.  Her  ways  are  not 
those  of  a  generation  which  has  learned  to  think 
in  the  theatre;  indeed,  her  art  is  precisely  to 


Second  Nights 


make  one  forget — forget  everything  but  Sarah 
herself,  and  applaud  frantically  and  shout: 
"Bravo!  Bravo!"  as  the  curtain  goes  down. 

During  a  recent  visit — five  years  before  we 
had  bade  farewell  to  that  golden  voice,  those 
limelit  sorceries,  that  splendid,  unconquerable 
spirit  which  was  leaving  us,  as  we  feelingly 
pointed  out,  perhaps  never  to  return — during 
this  later  farewell,  she  amused  herself  for  an 
afternoon  with  "Madame  X,"  a  melodrama 
of  the  day.  Miss  Dorothy  Donnelly,  a  capable 
young  actress  with  considerable  experience  in 
melodrama,  had  been  playing  the  role  with 
an  almost  youthful  Kipling's  delight  in  brutal 
realism.  Her  picture  of  the  woman's  degrada- 
tion was  such  a  strain  on  the  nerves,  in  fact, 
that  it  was  not  uncommon  for  women  to  be 
carried  out,  as  one  was  carried  out  the  night 
I  saw  the  play,  struggling  and  gurgling: 
"Oh,  I  can't  see  it!  I  can't  see  it!" 

This  is,  of  course,  forbidden  by  the  Bern- 
hardt  tradition.  You  may  break,  you  may 
shatter  the  poor  old  audience  if  you  will,  but 
you  must  still  be  attractive  and  beautiful. 
Bernhardt  never  let  the  woman  quite  lose  her 
frayed  gentility,  and  got  her  effects  by  sudden 

[72 1 


Novelli  and  Our  Own 


explosions  from  her  comparatively  quiet  key. 
Such  was  the  climax  of  the  first  act  when  the 
guilty  wife  was  driven  from  her  home  in  a 
screaming  duel  with  her  husband,  one  hand 
convulsively  clutching  the  door-jamb,  after  her 
body  had  disappeared,  like  the  hand  of  a 
drowning  person  above  the  water. 

In  front  of  me  at  that  performance  sat 
Mr.  Billy  Muldoon,  that  bronzed  and  square- 
jawed  dealer  in  youth  and  repairer  of  wrecked 
constitutions,  fairly  thrusting  his  glasses  into 
the  footlights  as  if  to  discover  a  secret  which 
even  he  did  not  know.  From  a  stage-box  one 
of  our  youngest  Broadway  stars  looked  down, 
with  all  the  intensity  of  expression  of  a 
Dresden  china  teacup,  while  her  white  gloves, 
held  high,  beat  languidly  back  and  forth  in 
that  curious  way  in  which  ladies  sometimes 
indicate,  without  making  audible,  their  ap- 
plause. And  from  behind,  out  of  a  warm  blur 
of  furs,  faces,  and  vague  perfume — it  was  a 
Friday  matinee,  and  all  the  idle  stage  world 
was  there — there  came  with  the  applause  a 
curious  collective  emotion,  questioning,  scep- 
tical, and  at  once  devoted,  loyal,  and  thrilled 
— the  present  generation  measuring  from  its 

[  73  ] 


Second  Nights 


opulent  youth  this  marvellous  old  lady  on  the 
stage. 

At  such  moments,  as  she  inclines  to  the  ap- 
plause, hands  clasped  beside  her  cheek,  head 
thrown  a  little  back  and  to  one  side,  an  ec- 
static smile  breaking  through  the  vermilion  lips 
and  heavily  darkened  eyes,  narrowed  to  slits 
of  coruscating  fire — that  do-with-me-as-you- 
will  gesture  of  the  grande  artiste — at  such  mo- 
ments, with  the  house  electric  with  applause, 
she  becomes  in  a  way  transfigured.  Behind  her 
you  can  see  the  vista  of  crowded  years,  other 
nights  and  other  audiences  like  this,  back  to 
the  days  of  our  grandfathers.  In  a  world  of 
compromise  and  half  living,  here  is  one  who 
has  gone  the  full  length  and  in  her  own  fash- 
ion greatly  lived. 

The  easy  final  judgment  of  an  actor's  work 
becomes  increasingly  difficult  the  more  one 
grows  acquainted  with  the  curious  and  com- 
plicated phenomena  of  Broadway.  That  hal- 
cyon time  of  innocence  in  which  the  author  is 
blamed  if  the  play  is  bad  and  the  actor  blamed 
if  the  acting  is  bad — and  a  play  must  be  taken 
as  it  is,  of  course,  and  not  as  it  might  have 
been — may  scarcely  be  enjoyed  to  the  full  by 

[  74] 


Novelli  and  Our  Own 


those  who  have  got  so  far  even  as  to  have  an 
acquaintance  "in  the  business." 

When  one  has  viewed  the  author's  writhings 
at  having  his  note  of  grateful  sentiment  or 
whimsical  comedy  smashed  to  satisfy  the  pro- 
ducer's demand  for  a  "punch,"  or  seen  the 
beautiful  heroine  in  the  last  act  topple  into 
the  arms  of  a  man  who  bores  her  to  death  in 
order  that  some  mythical  lack  of  "love  inter- 
est" may  be  filled,  or  because  the  star  declared 
that  the  omission  of  his  "love  scene"  is  some- 
thing to  which  the  public  would  never  con- 
sent, it  is  less  simple,  the  next  time,  to  call 
the  apparently  feeble-minded  playwright  to 
account. 

When  the  lady  counterfeiter  acts  as  if  she 
were  trying  to  sing  blank  verse  instead  of  talk 
colloquial  English,  it  ought  to  be  easy  to  see 
that  she  is  a  bad  actress ;  but  this  feat  is  com- 
plicated by  the  knowledge  that  the  leading 
man,  who  owns  a  half  interest  in  the  play  and 
has  his  name  in  electric  lights  out  in  front, 
compels  the  poor  creature  so  to  mouth  her 
lines  in  order  that  his  own  terse  method  may 
stand  out  more  clearly  and  the  audience  be 
the  more  impressed  with  the  iron  self-control 

t  75  I 


Second  Nights 


and  superhuman  perception  of  his  stage  de- 
tective. 

The  tyranny  of  stars  might  seem  beyond  all 
understanding  and  excuse  did  not  one  recall 
the  strange  power  acting  has  to  steel  the  hu- 
man breast.  You  have  but  to  go  to  the  nearest 
suburban  dramatic  club  to  find,  in  miniature, 
the  same  jealousies,  the  same  eternal  conflict 
between  actor  and  author.  The  one  is  con- 
vinced that  the  other  mangles  his  play,  and 
he  positive  that  it  is  only  his  own  dazzling  im- 
provisations which  keep  the  audience  from  ris- 
ing in  a  body  and  going  home. 

One  glare  of  the  footlights — even  the  some- 
what feeble  footlights  of  the  village  hall — ap- 
pears to  burn  the  player's  every-day  husk  away. 
He  is  a  creature  transformed,  breathes  a  thin- 
ner, more  intoxicating  ether,  has  drunk  strange 
wine.  An  instant  before  a  hard-headed  lawyer, 
now  he  knows  no  law,  but  leaps  from  license 
to  license,  and  there's  no  holding  him.  If  act- 
ing can  thus  transform  the  mere  Saturday- 
evening  amateur,  a  good  deal  may  be  forgiven 
the  professional  to  whom  the  nightly  applause 
is  not  only  the  breath  of  life,  but  the  very  meat 
and  drink  of  it,  the  proof  that  he  can  "still  do 

[76] 


Novelli  and  Our  Own 


it,"  the  measure  of  his  survival  in  a  cruel, 
competitive  trade. 

Richard  Mansfield  was  generally  supposed 
to  be  something  of  a  tyrant  and  to  sacrifice 
his  associates  and  even  the  author's  work  to 
his  own  advantage.  His  occasional  habit  of 
scolding  his  audience,  and  the  aggressive,  al- 
most granitic  personality  felt  all  through  his 
work,  tended  to  confirm  this  reputation ;  yet, 
if  all  the  gossip  were  true,  surely  no  other 
American  player  of  his  day  had  so  good  a  right 
to  the  high  hand.  Nor  did  any — finer  and  more 
delicate  artist  though  he  were  in  a  more  re- 
stricted field — have  so  much  the  quality  of 
greatness,  stand  forth  so  salient  a  figure,  after 
the  fashion  of  the  interesting  Italian  with 
whom  these  remarks  commenced. 

During  the  latter  days  of  his  career  Mr. 
Mansfield  was  occasionally  spoken  of  as  the 
worst  actor  in  America.  The  glimmer  of  wit 
which  such  remarks  were  supposed  to  have 
came  from  Mr.  Mansfield's  positive  tempera- 
ment and  his  mannerisms.  His  "bark,"  the 
curious  expression  of  his  sturdy  legs — "So 
many  of  my  critics,"  he  once  protested,  "harp 
upon  my  physical  shortcomings,  forgetting 

[77] 


Second  Nights 


that  I  am  not  playing  to  them  with  my  legs, 
but  with  my  mind"  —his  habit  of  jumping  his 
voice  up  an  octave  on  the  third  or  fourth  syl- 
lable of  a  sentence,  especially  in  vehement 
declamation — all  these  were  habitual  and,  it 
sometimes  seemed,  almost  perverse.  He  was 
not  the  sort  of  artist  delicately  to  insinuate 
himself  beneath  the  skin  of  a  role,  to  glide  into 
and  become  part  of  it.  There  was  too  much  of 
the  inalterable  "I."  His  aggressive  intellect- 
uality did  not  melt — although  he  was  amaz- 
ingly versatile — but  rather  seized  a  part  and 
forced  the  spectator  to  accept  his  interpreta- 
tion whether  or  no. 

It  was  in  the  tricky  part  of  Baron  Chevrial 
in  "A  Parisian  Romance"  that  he  jumped  all 
at  once  into  fame,  and  it  was  in  dramatic  ex- 
ternals, the  painting  of  vivid  portraits  rather 
than  in  the  deeper  interpretation  of  character, 
that  he  was  at  his  best.  He  had  astonishing 
physical  virtuosity — sometimes  too  much.  The 
hands  trembling  until  Shylock's  deed  and 
scales  fairly  rattled,  the  shaky  wine-glass  in 
the  hand  of  Baron  Chevrial,  the  faint  rattling 
of  the  sword-hilt  in  Don  Carlos's  trembling 
hand — so  perfectly  done  and  long  continued 

[  78  1 


Novelli  and  Our  Own 


that  the  curious  spectator  must  take  his  atten- 
tion from  the  main  swing  of  the  scene  to  see 
how  the  trick  was  done — this  was  a  too  clever 
cleverness,  and  although  he  could  assume  the 
air  of  youth  with  astonishing  accuracy — as  in 
"Monsieur  Beaucaire,"  for  instance,  or  "Old 
Heidelberg" —it  was  physical  grace  and 
sprightliness  rather  than  a  boy's  awkwardness 
and  innocence.  His  Prince  in  "Old  Heidel- 
berg" made  love  all  too  thoroughly,  and  one 
recalls  how,  in  the  early  scenes  of  "Peer 
Gynt,"  he  represented  careless  and  imagina- 
tive youth  by  describing  continuous  and  mys- 
terious circles  about  his  head  until  one  almost 
expected  him  to  pull  a  silver  dollar  out  of  one 
of  his  ears  or  ask  which  one  of  the  three  shells 
the  little  ball  was  under.  The  change  in  "  Peer 
Gynt,"  however,  from  the  fantastic  boy  of 
the  northern  fiords  to  the  canny  old  material- 
ist on  the  beach  at  Morocco,  with  his  white 
spats  and  English  accent,  was  one  of  those 
vivid  effects  he  specially  relished,  and  he  played 
it  with  captivating  sureness  and  gusto. 

He  was,  to  be  sure,  a  "character  actor"  and 
not  unwilling  to  sacrifice  his  company  and 
play  to  put  his  one  vivid  portrait  in  a  brighter 

[79] 


Second  Nights 


light;  yet  under  whatever  mask  he  wore  was 
felt  a  force,  a  certain  all-there-ness  close  to 
genius.  With  this  he  wore  the  polished  inso- 
lence of  Beau  Brummel  as  if  it  were  a  glove, 
and  rose  to  his  full  height  in  parts  calling  for 
decision,  aggressive  masculinity,  the  fervor  of 
intelligent  power.  If  the  kind  of  thing  he  did 
was  not  always  the  greatest  kind  of  thing  to  do, 
he  did  it  in  a  great  way.  He  was  always  vivid, 
virile,  and  sure,  and  he  had  that  greatest  of 
things,  a  voice,  always  magnetic,  which  rose 
like  a  trumpet  when  he  so  wished  and  flung 
the  lines  across  the  footlights,  vibrating  and 
alive,  to  grip  his  audience  and  conquer  it. 

His  very  acerbity  became  to  the  audiences 
of  his  latter  days  a  sort  of  charm.  They  sat 
back  with  the  smiling  assurance  that  the  king 
could  do  no  wrong,  and  what  might  once  have 
been  resented  as  bumptiousness  was  welcomed 
as  the  lovable  human  frailty  of  one  who  had 
won  the  right  to  treat  them  lightly.  When  his 
work  ended  with  a  scene  yet  to  be  played 
nothing  delighted  them  more  than  to  have  him 
whip  off  his  wig  and  answer  the  curtain  calls, 
no  more  the  artist,  but  the  round-headed  man, 
blinking  across  the  footlights  that  inscruta- 

[so] 


Novelli  and  Our  Own 


ble,  bulldoggy  smile,  and  holding  his  dressing- 
gown  about  his  throat  as  if  he  had  just  been 
interrupted  in  some  very  important  game  of 
tennis.  This,  as  it  were,  assumption  of  the 
non-existence  of  an  audience  suggested  that 
substratum  of  acid  and  flint  of  which  they  had 
heard,  and  they  were  charmed,  as  the  public 
ever  is  when  its  favorites  do  what  is  expected 
of  them. 

Instead  of  reclining  in  this  easy  prosperity, 
as  he  might  have  done,  he  was  always  driving 
ahead;  and  he  could  be  counted  on  each  year 
to  add  at  least  one  new  portrait  to  his  al- 
ready varied  gallery.  Long  before  Mr.  Shaw 
was  heard  of,  so  to  speak,  he  had  acquainted 
America  with  "Arms  and  the  Man"  and  "The 
Devil's  Disciple."  It  was  he  who  produced 
"Cyrano  de  Bergerac"  and  "Dr.  Jekyll  and 
Mr.  Hyde";  and  even  "The  Scarlet  Letter," 
unsatisfactory  as  it  was  as  a  play,  was  in- 
spired by  his  intelligent  interest  in  literature 
and  his  ambition  worthily  to  transfer  it  to 
the  stage. 

He  produced,  for  the  first  time  in  En- 
glish, Moliere's  "Misanthrope."  An  enormous 
amount  of  erudition  hitherto  locked  up  in  en- 
[  81  ] 


Second  Nights 


cyclopaedias  and  undergraduate  classrooms  was 
printed  along  with  the  news  of  the  day,  and 
one  had  the  novel  experience  of  walking  from 
Forty-second  Street  into  seventeenth-century 
Paris  and  finding  the  wheels  in  people's  heads 
moving  strangely  as  they  do  to-day.  He  fol- 
lowed it  with  Schiller's  "  Don  Carlos,"  only  less 
successful  because  the  play  was  less  actable 
and  the  personality  of  that  unhappy  young 
Prince  less  in  Mr.  Mansfield's  vein.  The  next 
year  he  presented  "Peer  Gynt,"  which  had 
never  been  seen  in  England  or  America,  and 
forthwith  the  Grieg  music  was  whistled  in  the 
streets  and  the  theatre  packed  for  weeks  with 
crowds  to  whom  Peer's  experiments  in  uncon- 
ditional self-realization  apparently  seemed  as 
entertaining  as  "Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde." 
The  power  of  an  actor,  as  secure  in  his  posi- 
tion as  Mr.  Mansfield,  to  stir  the  public  is  a 
marvellous  thing,  and  he  was  one  of  the  few  to 
feel  his  responsibilities  and  live  up  to  them. 
Shylock,  Brutus,  Henry  V,  Prince  Karl,  Don 
Juan,  Nero,  Napoleon,  and  Ivan  the  Terrible 
were  among  his  other  roles.  "Peer  Gynt"  was 
his  last,  and  when  he  dropped  out,  almost  in 
harness,  there  was  none  to  take  his  place. 
[  82  ] 


IV 

A   MINOR   POET  OF 
BROADWAY 


IF  New  York  had  a  Montmartre  and  Mr. 
George  Cohan  were  a  Frenchman,  one  can 
almost  imagine  him  wearing  baggy  clothes  and 
a  Windsor  tie,  and  stalking  up  and  down 
between  the  tables  of  his  cafe  chantant  of 
an  evening,  singing  his  songs  of  Broadway. 
People  would  take  him  seriously,  admire  his 
lyrics  because  they  were  so  "instinct"  with 
the  spirit  of  a  certain  curious  fringe  of  society, 
and  words  and  music  would  doubtless  be  pub- 
lished in  limited  de-luxe  editions  for  circula- 
tion among  the  literati. 

Mr.  Cohan  is  a  talented  young  man.  He 
can  dance  in  a  way  to  charm  wild  beasts  from 
their  dens  and  make  them  sit  up  and  wonder; 
he  expresses  the  feelings  of  a  certain  metro- 
politan type  as  does  no  one  else,  and  he  not 
only  sings  and  acts  his  pieces,  but  also  writes 
their  words  and  music.  People  who  would 
naturally  derive  no  pleasure  from  that  con- 

[  83  ] 


Second  Nights 


glomeration  of  noise  and  cheapness  of  which 
his  musical  plays  superficially  consist  are  often 
baffled  to  explain  the  odd  fascination  of  Mr. 
Cohan's  personal  work.  It  seems  to  consist 
very  much  in  the  sincerity  and  artistic  con- 
viction with  which  he  does  the  precise  thing 
that  you  yourself  probably  would  try  not  to  do. 
He  neither  attempts  to  impersonate  the  gen- 
tleman in  the  narrower  sense  of  the  word,  nor, 
on  the  other  hand,  to  hide  his  own  personality 
behind  some  such  broad  character  part  as  the 
traditional  Bowery  tough  boy.  Instead  he  as- 
sumes the  cheap  sophistication  of  the  blase 
racing  tout  or  book-maker,  sings  through  his 
nose  practically  on  one  note,  wears  clothes 
that  just  miss  being  the  real  thing — in  short, 
pitches  everything  in  the  key  of  slangy  cyni- 
cism and  cheapness  characteristic  of  that  cu- 
rious half-world  which  foregathers  at  Forty- 
second  Street  and  the  shady  side  of  Broadway. 
So  clever  a  person  could  doubtless  assume  a 
superficial  refinement  for  stage  purpose  if  he 
wanted  to.  Mr.  Cohan  apparently  doesn't; 
apparently  he  has  carefully  worked  out  a 
"method"  aimed  at  sublimated  cheapness, 
and  got  away  with  it. 

[  84] 


A  Minor  Poet  of  Broadway 


In  "Forty-five  Minutes  from  Broadway,"  a 
curiously  uneven  conglomeration  of  "musical 
comedy,"  puns,  and  melodrama,  ostensibly 
designed  as  a  vehicle  for  the  familiar  humor  of 
Miss  Fay  Templeton,  Mr.  Cohan  has  created 
in  Kid  Burns  a  character  rather  broader  than 
he  himself  impersonates,  but  typical  of  his 
point  of  view.  The  Kid  is  "secretary"  to  a 
young  millionaire  who  has  just  taken  a  house 
at  New  Rochelle,  and  through  him  the  spec- 
tator views  that  suburb — not  as  it  is,  probably, 
but  as  it  might  appear  in  the  day-dream 
of  some  good-humored  book-maker  or  wire- 
tapper  lounging  of  a  summer  afternoon  in 
the  shade  of  the  Metropole.  As  the  Kid  sings: 

"Only  forty-five  minutes  from  Broadway.  Think  of  the 

changes  it  brings, 

For  the  short  time  it  takes,  what  a  difference  it  makes 
in  the  ways  of  the  people  and  things." 

His  droll  amazement  at  the  ease  with  which 
he  can  "get  a  laugh"  with  the  stalest  line— 
"all  the  old  stuff  goes  here"  —his  genuine  des- 
peration at  the  inability  of  the  suburbanites  to 
understand  his  nimble  slang—  'c  You've  gotta 
talk  baby-talk  to  these  guys — all  they  can 

[8s  i 


Second  Nights 


understand  is  pantomime" — these  and  simi- 
lar observations  are  given  such  sincerity  and 
earnestness,  such  an  almost  pathetic  appeal, 
by  the  quiet-voiced,  lazily  good-humored, 
plaintive  Kid  that  for  the  moment  the  home- 
sickness of  this  parasite  of  the  town,  as  he 
thinks  of  himself,  "standin'  at  the  corner  of 
Forty-second  Street,  smokin'  a  fi'-cent  Cremo 
cigar,  an'  waitin'  for  the  next  race  to  come 
in,"  seems  important.  His  principal  song,  with 
the  lullaby-like  refrain  coming  at  the  end  of 
each  verse— -"only  forty-five  minutes  from 
Broadway" —and  Mr.  Victor  Moore's  singing 
of  it,  are  perfect  of  their  kind.  The  emotion 
which  makes  the  lights  of  Broadway  the  sun  of 
one's  existence,  and  its  fatuous  and  premedi- 
tated gayety  the  music  of  one's  soul,  is  not  a 
heroic  one,  but  to  a  certain  corner  of  the  world 
it  is  exceedingly  real.  And  in  Kid  Burns  Mr. 
Moore  and  Mr.  Cohan  unite  in  very  enter- 
tainingly expressing  it.  ... 
January,  1906. 

Mr.  Cohan  keeps  developing.  He  not  only 
sings  of  Broadway,  but  he  is  getting  to  be  a 
sort  of  song-bird  and  prophet  of  that  frank 
[86] 


A  Minor  Poet  of  Broadway 


materialism  characteristic  of  a  certain  side  of 
New  York,  and,  indeed,  of  America.  It  is  for 
this  reason  that  his  "Get-Rich-Quick  Wal- 
lingford,"  which  he  has  arranged  from  stories 
written  by  Mr.  George  Randolph  Chester  for 
one  of  the  magazines,  is  a  much  more  genuine 
expression  of  his  audience's  notions  of  fun  than 
anything  a  Falstaff  might  do,  and  for  them,  at 
least,  a  more  satisfying  form  of  art. 

This  get-rich-quick  man  comes  to  a  little 
country  town  to  inveigle  the  local  financiers 
into  investing  in  a  company  to  manufacture  a 
covered  carpet-tack.  The  piercing  eye  of  the 
critic  perceives  that  he  is  nothing  more  nor 
less  than  a  confidence  man,  in  spite  of  the  mag- 
netic charm  and  healthy  good  humor  of  the 
young  man  who  plays  the  part;  yet  his  quali- 
ties of  energy,  resourcefulness,  and  his  breezy 
command  of  all  situations,  are  things  which, 
in  a  little  different  form,  are  greatly  admired 
in  America — more  generally  admired,  perhaps, 
than  anything  else. 

There  is  a  certain  special  pleasure  to  be 
derived  from  any  spontaneous  art.  Shake- 
speare's audiences  liked  to  eat  and  drink,  so 
they  were  amused  at  a  sort  of  Gargantuan 

[87] 


Second  Nights 


eater  and  drinker.  Mr.  Cohan's  audiences  like 
to  make  money,  and  it  is  natural  that  they 
should  be  amused  by  a  man  who  makes  it 
with  absurd  easiness  and  a  light  heart. 

It  is  reassuring  to  record  that  Wallingford 
and  his  pal  fall  in  love  in  the  little  town 
and  reform,  as  people  fortunately  are  able  to 
do,  at  least  in  plays.  It  should  also  be  said 
that  the  covered  carpet-tack  turns  out  to  be 
a  good  thing  after  all.  At  any  rate,  the  sales 
are  enormous,  and  that  makes  a  thing  good, 
presumably.  Of  course,  Mr.  Cohan  is  not  alone 
in  this  worship  of  the  main  chance,  but  he 
worships  with  an  unusually  frank  and  child- 
like sincerity.  Surely  nothing  could  be  more 
quaintly  genuine— indeed,  in  its  primal  joy, 
quite  truly  Elizabethan — than  the  head  wait- 
ress, who,  having  been  swept  up  to  luxury  on 
the  carpet-tack  wave,  languidly  asks  to  be 
excused  from  shaking  hands  because  her  in- 
numerable diamond  rings  would  hurt  her  fin- 
gers. .  .  . 

December,  1908. 

In  "Broadway  Jones,"  Mr.  Cohan  discards 
songs,  chorus  girls,  and  his  own  dances,  and 
[88  ] 


A  Minor  Poet  of  Broadway 


offers  himself  as  a  regular  actor.  One  can  easily 
imagine  a  stranger  to  America,  inspecting  us 
for  the  first  time,  finding  this  the  freshest  and 
most  characteristic  exhibit  of  our  theatres. 
Polite  comedy,  such  as  Mr.  Drew  presents, 
timely  melodrama,  like  "Within  the  Law," 
musical  plays — all  these  things  are  but  imita- 
tions or  duplications  of  things  done  just  as 
well  or  better  abroad.  "Broadway  Jones," 
though  but  a  flower  of  the  Broadway  asphalt, 
is  wholly  of  the  soil. 

The  lights  of  that  strange  thoroughfare 
completely  bound  this  young  man's  world. 
The  little  town  of  Jonesville,  Connecticut, 
where  the  paternal  chewing-gum  factory  was 
situated — Broadway  broke  from  that  shabby 
cocoon  as  soon  as  he  came  into  his  fortune— 
the  suburbs,  the  entire  universe,  indeed,  be- 
yond the  shows  and  restaurants  of  New  York, 
is  the  abode  of  "rubes"  living  in  an  outer 
darkness.  "Were  you  ever  in  Newark?  .  .  . 
Then  you  know  what  I  suffered."  In  a  mo- 
ment of  inspiration  he  thinks  of  having  enough 
money  "to  buy  Brooklyn — and  then  close  it 
up."  Waiters  fight  for  him  as  he  enters  a 
restaurant;  barbers  rush  to  their  chairs  at 


Second  Nights 


his  approach  as  if  they  were  answering  fire- 
alarms. 

His  trust  in  money — the  concrete,  touch- 
able means  of  turning  up  the  Broadway  lamps 
and  making  its  world  kowtow — is  similarly 
childlike.  At  the  opening  of  the  piece  the  real- 
ization that  he  is  at  last  completely  "broke" 
arrives  coincidentally  with  a  telegram  an- 
nouncing his  uncle's  demise  and  that  the 
chewing-gum  plant  is  now  his.  The  first  im- 
pulse is  to  sell  out  to  the  Trust  for  the  mil- 
lions they  offer  him,  and  in  the  next  three  acts, 
which  take  place  at  Jonesville,  Broadway's 
ingenuous  desire  to  get  the  cash  at  once  is 
contrasted  with  the  earnest  attempts  of  the 
young  woman  secretary  of  the  factory  to  make 
him  see  that  his  duty  to  his  family — who  have 
had  the  business  for  three  generations — and 
to  the  hundreds  of  workmen  who  would  be 
turned  out  if  the  Trust  took  the  plant,  should 
make  him  buckle  down  and  continue  the  busi- 
ness. Perhaps  the  best  comedy  of  the  piece  is 
the  scene  in  which  the  brisk  young  secretary 
explains  the  flourishing  condition  of  the  busi- 
ness, while  Broadway,  to  whom  all  her  re- 
marks, except  phrases  like  "hundred  thou- 

[90] 


A  Minor  Poet  of  Broadway 


sand  dollars'  worth,"  are  entirely  incompre- 
hensible, endeavors  to  appear  interested  and 
at  the  same  time  keeps  murmuring,  with  curi- 
ous zigzag  gestures  expressive  of  his  mystified 
state  of  mind:  "Yes — but  what  I  want  to 
know  is  how  much  .  .  .  that  is,  when  you 
come  right  down  to  it,  what's — how  much 
cash  is  there  and  when  can  I  get  it?" 

Here,  as  in  "Get-Rich-Quick  Wallingford," 
thanks  to  the  melting  influence  of  the  secre- 
tary, there  is  at  least  a  nominal  regeneration, 
and  we  see  Broadway  at  last  apparently  about 
to  settle  down  in  the  old  town.  Mr.  Cohan 
keeps  his  note  of  broad  farce  to  the  end,  how- 
ever, and  although  the  secretary's  personal 
charms  gild  the  picture  of  the  business  handed 
down  to  him  which  he  must  hand  down  to 
his  children— "and  so  on — and  so  on,"  as 
Broadway  remarks,  with  a  wave  of  the  hand, 
when  a  sentimental  relative  begins  with  "Your 
grandfather  sat  in  that  chair — and  he  died. 
Then  your  father  sat  there — and  he  died.  And 
then  your  uncle  sat  there — and  he  died.  And 
now  you—  "  No,  you  don't ! "  says  Broadway, 
with  characteristic  regard  for  the  immediate 
present,  and  changes  his  seat. 

[91  ] 


Second  Nights 


Without  Mr.  Cohan's  childlike  cocksure- 
ness,  without  his  clothes  and  his  walk  and  his 
hat  tipped  over  one  eye  and  his  way  of  talk- 
ing through  his  nose,  this  unregenerate  child 
of  Broadway  would  lose  half  his  charm.  Mr. 
Cohan's  more  or  less  consciously  elaborated 
surface  "cheapness"  actually  makes  his  char- 
acters more  likable  by  taking  them  into  the 
region  of  caricature  where  ordinary  judgments 
are  disarmed.  The  black  patent-leather  shoes 
with  tan  tops  and  the  nasal  monotone  have 
a  relation  to  reality  similar  to  that  of  the  ac- 
tion of  the  play — express  a  similar  taste  and 
trust.  The  surface  is  farcical,  but  through  the 
heightened  light  we  see  more  clearly  the  genu- 
ine feeling  beneath — the  poetry,  so  to  speak, 
of  this  quaint  cheapness  and  vulgarity.  Again, 
Mr.  Cohan  becomes  its  voice.  The  theatre, 
the  play,  and  the  principal  part  are  his,  and 
he  does  not  rely,  as  far  as  I  can  recall,  on  a 
word  of  spoken  slang.  We  may  be  writing 
about  Mr.  Cohan's  "third  period"  or  "later 
manner"  before  he  gets  through. 

February,  1910. 


[92] 


V 

THE   HIDDEN   MEANING 


iHERE  is  a  machine  called  the  pantograph, 
with  which,  by  tracing  over  with  one  pencil, 
rather  laboriously,  the  outlines  of  some  tiny 
picture,  you  cause  another  pencil  to  draw,  all 
by  itself  and  intuitively,  as  it  were,  a  much 
larger  picture.  What  the  pantograph  is  to  the 
draughtsman  the  allegory  is  to  the  writer- 
only  fascinatingly  more  so.  Hitch  your  wagon  to 
it  and  there  is  no  telling  whither  you  may  soar. 

Consider,  for  example,  a  young  man  and 
his  Dulcinea  playing  mumblety-peg  any  fine 
spring  afternoon  on  the  nearest  country-club 
lawn.  Both  young  people  are,  let  us  say,  abso- 
lutely inarticulate,  unable  to  express  in  intelli- 
gible English  sentences  their  regard  for  each 
other. 

The  young  lady,  remarking  on  the  beauty 
of  the  weather,  wishes  that  she  had  a  one- 
hundred-and-twenty-horse-power  automobile. 
The  youth,  with  ready  wit,  hopes  that  when 
she  gets  one  she  will  come  round  some  day  and 

[93  1 


Second  Nights 


give  him  a  ride.  She,  rallying  brilliantly,  inti- 
mates that  possibly  she  might  make  him  her 
chauffeur.  He,  following  the  inevitable  as- 
sociation of  ideas,  enlarges  on  the  zeal  and 
faithfulness  with  which  he  would  perform  the 
chauffeur's  duties — carry  her  brilliantly  past 
all  the  others  in  the  road,  soften  the  rough 
places,  shelter  her  when  it  rained.  In  short,  in 
five  minutes — simply  by  catching  hold  of  an 
automobile — this  mute,  inglorious  youth  is 
talking  poetry. 

Mr.  Charles  Rann  Kennedy's  play,  "The 
Servant  in  the  House,"  was  an  interesting  ex- 
ample of  the  way  in  which  an  allegory,  once 
caught  and  put  to  work,  so  to  speak,  becomes 
a  very  genie,  compared  with  whose  huge 
ministrations  the  author  seems  scarcely  more 
than  a  little  anxious  man  rubbing  a  lamp. 

The  atrophy  of  Christian  spirit,  the  worldli- 
ness  of  the  modern  "fashionable"  church,  was 
Mr.  Kennedy's  theme,  and  he  brought  these 
things  face  to  face  with  the  Christ  spirit  by 
reincarnating  that  spirit  in  the  form  of  an 
Oriental  servant  who  comes  to  an  English 
vicarage  and  serves  as  a  sort  of  butler  in  the 
house. 

[94] 


The  Hidden  Meaning 


A  bishop  who  visits  here  represents  the 
worldly  ecclesiastic — a  high-church  politician 
who  courts  the  rich,  ignores  the  poor,  and  lives 
luxuriously  on  rents  contributed  by  squalor 
and  vice.  Naturally  an  oldish  man,  gouty,  per- 
haps, a  little  deaf  and  near-sighted.  What  more 
inevitable  than  to  give  him  an  ear-trumpet, 
double  spectacles,  and  have  him  stumble 
against  the  furniture  now  and  then  as  he  moves 
about  the  stage?  And  behold  the  result! 
Every  time  the  Servant  addresses  him  and 
he  irritably  reaches  for  the  ear-trumpet  and 
squeaks,  " What's  that,  what's  that?"  Every 
time  he  squints  and  tries  to  see,  or  bumps 
into  a  table  or  chair,  each  spectator,  accord- 
ing to  his  own  experience  and  fervor,  sees 
the  deafness  and  blindness  and  bigotry  and 
blundering  of  the  modern  fashionable  church. 
These  simple  bits  of  stage  business  have  the 
force  of  the  most  brilliant  and  powerful 
"lines."  They  thunder  and  roar.  Shakespeare, 
Moliere,  Goethe,  and  all  the  rest  of  them 
could,  at  the  moment,  achieve  nothing  more 
impressive.  And  this  sort  of  effect  is  con- 
stantly made,  its  force  and  frequency  depend- 
ing on  the  spectator's  keenness  in  following 

[95 1 


Second  Nights 


the  symbolism  and  the  richness  of  his  mental 
background. 

In  the  climax  of  his  little  fantasy,  "  Panta- 
loon," Mr.  Barrie  strikes  a  similar  blow  with 
what  seem  at  first  sight  the  airiest  means. 
The  traditional  figures  of  English  pantomime 
are  used  here  to  retell  the  old  story  of  love 
finding  a  way  in  spite  of  the  irate  father 
and  the  rich  and  brutal  suitor  of  his  choice, 
and  all  being  forgiven  when  the  grandchild 
comes. 

As  the  curtain  rises  on  Pantaloon's  shabby 
old  room,  Columbine — and  how  flower-like 
and  airy  did  Miss  Beatrice  Agnew  make  her 
when  the  piece  was  played  here,  till  Harlequin 
seemed  to  blow  her  about  with  his  breath!— 
Columbine  is  kneeling  before  the  fireplace  in 
her  bouncy  ballet  skirt,  just  as  if  she  were  in 
the  pantomime,  toasting  bread  and  sausages. 
Brisk  young  Harlequin,  in  his  queer,  varie- 
gated tights,  frisks  in  with  all  his  harlequin 
postures  and  gesturing.  He  has  brought  the 
ring.  It  is  scarcely  on  Columbine's  finger — all 
this  in  pantomime — when  old  Pantaloon  tot- 
ters in,  leaning  on  his  stick.  He  has  "missed  his 
laugh"  that  day.  When  he  fell  into  the  barrel 

[96] 


The  Hidden  Meaning 


the  people  out  in  front  never  stirred — he,  the 
inimitable  Old  Un—  "so  funny  you  can't  look 
at  me  without  laughing;  just  try  it  now!"  Then 
follows — Pantaloon  speaking,  the  young  folks 
in  pantomime — the  discovery  of  the  ring  and 
the  old  man's  refusal  of  consent.  Columbine 
must  be  given  to  the  Clown,  the  great  Joey, 
upon  whom  Pantaloon  is  dependent  for  his 
place  in  the  company. 

Columbine  gives  up  her  love  at  first  for 
her  father's  sake,  but  when  the  horrid  Clown 
comes  in — the  rich,  the  brutal,  leering  Clown 
—and  leeringly  is  about  to  claim  her,  young 
Harlequin  leaps  in  through  the  window,  and 
out  the  lovers  fly  together. 

The  curtain  falls  to  suggest  the  flight  of 
years  and  rises  to  reveal  old  Pantaloon,  starv- 
ing, in  his  garret.  The  wicked  Clown,  reek- 
ing with  success,  comes  in  to  taunt  him — to 
offer  him  a  place  and  then  to  laugh  at  him.  He 
will  not  even  tickle  him  with  the  hot  poker 
again  for  old  time's  sake — he  can't  grant  that 
favor  to  folks  outside  the  profession ;  an  artist 
cannot  be  familiar  with  one  of  the  mere  public. 
"No  clown"  —and  he  laughs  himself  out  with 
that  cruel  laugh  of  his—  "will  ever  tickle  you 

[97] 


Second  Nights 


again."  Then,  back  after  the  years  to  beg 
forgiveness,  come  poor  Harlequin  and  Colum- 
bine, a  little  older,  tarnished  by  life's  journey, 
weary  and  pale.  Columbine  almost  totters  as 
she  flutters  across  the  stage.  And  with  them  is 
the  Kid,  a  tiny,  impish  creature  dressed  like 
a  clown,  who  skips  under  the  table  before  the 
old  man  sees  him.  Pantaloon  awakes  from 
the  revery  into  which  he  had  sunk,  with  his 
old  bladder  stick  in  his  arms,  to  the  memory 
of  the  past,  of  all  his  defeat  and  bitterness. 
"Go! "he  is  about  to  say,  when  out  from  un- 
der the  table-cloth  comes  the  hot  poker,  tick- 
ling his  leg.  Out  after  it  comes  the  Kid,  an- 
other Joey  in  miniature,  his  Kid!  And  a 
Clown  has  tickled  him!  The  two  fall  to  slap- 
ping cheeks  and  sticking  out  tongues  as 
though  Pantaloon  were  on  the  stage  again. 

And  it  is  no  mere  broken-down  actor  and 
an  amusing  youngster  with  a  vermilion  mouth 
that  the  audience  sees  as  the  curtain  falls,  but 
the  tragedy  of  old  age  and  its  renunciations,  of 
the  artist  whose  creative  fire  must  sooner  or 
later  smoulder  down  and  die,  and  the  miracle 
of  renewed  existence,  the  spark  of  life  passed 
on  as  the  torch  of  the  Old  Un  goes  out. 

[98] 


The  Hidden  Meaning 


Mighty  and  obedient  when  the  lamp  is 
rubbed  in  just  the  right  way,  the  symbol  is  an 
extremely  sensitive  and  touchy  slave  and,  es- 
pecially on  the  stage,  likely  to  refuse  to  work 
at  the  least  excuse.  The  trouble  here  is  to  give 
him  an  exterior  which  will  satisfy  the  eye  with- 
out destroying  his  broader  usefulness.  You 
may,  like  Mr.  Edwin  Milton  Royle  in  his  mo- 
rality play,  "The  Struggle  Everlasting"  —be- 
tween flesh  and  spirit — wish  to  suggest  "bright 
college  years,"  but  when  you  fill  a  stage  with 
badly  rouged  Broadway  supers  singing  the 
"Stein  Song,"  it  is  not  youth's  fragrance  the 
audience  feels. 

Maeterlinck  is  sometimes  no  more  success- 
ful, beautiful  as  is  his  poetry.  His  "blue  bird  of 
happiness,"  which  was  so  hard  to  catch  and 
couldn't  be  caged,  apparently;  which  the  chil- 
dren thought  they  had  found  in  the  Land  of 
Memory,  only  to  have  it  turn  black  when  they 
went  away;  which  they  found  again  in  the 
Garden  of  Dreams — where,  indeed,  the  very 
air  was  azure  with  them — only  to  lose  when 
Light  met  them;  which,  at  last,  they  found  in 
a  cage  at  their  own  cottage  door  and  saw 
grow  bluer  and  bluer  when  they  shared  it  with 

[99] 


Second  Nights 


Madam  Berlingot's  sick  little  daughter — this 
is  a  perfect  example  of  symbolism. 

All  the  concrete  symbols  in  "The  Blue  Bird" 
— solid,  platitudinous  old  Bread,  dreadfully 
afraid  of  anything  strange  or  dangerous ;  sanc- 
timonious Sugar;  Milk,  Water,  Fire,  Light; 
the  lovely  Hours  dancing  out  of  the  clock — all 
these  make  an  enchanting  sort  of  walking 
poetry.  And  there  are  moments,  like  that  in 
the  Kingdom  of  the  Future — of  the  children 
yet  unborn — where  the  little  fellow,  who  has 
to  be  a  hero  and  fight  injustice  on  earth,  hangs 
back,  reluctant  to  go,  with  a  poignant  thrust 
which  ordinary  words  can  scarce  describe. 

On  the  other  hand,  that  "prolonged,  power- 
ful, crystalline  vibration  heard  to  rise  and  swell 
as  Time  comes  to  open  the  gates  for  the  chil- 
dren"; "the  cerulean  whirl  of  wheels,  disks, 
and  as  yet  unnamed  objects,"  as  the  unborn 
inventors  set  their  ideal  machines  going- 
phrases  like  these,  powerfully  as  they  may  stir 
the  reader's  imagination,  are  more  or  less  im- 
possible to  express  on  the  stage. 

Then,  again,  there  is  the  practical  difficulty 
that  the  burden  of  the  play  rests  on  the  neces- 
sarily unauthoritative  acting  of  two  little  chil- 
li 100  ] 


The  Hidden  Meaning 


dren.  Take  the  graveyard  scene,  for  instance; 
the  reader  feels  the  creepy  terror  which  seizes 
the  children  as  the  moment  comes  for  the  dead 
to  rise  from  their  graves. 

MYTYL  (cowering  against  TYLTYL)  :  They  are  coming 
out!  They  are  coming  out!  (Then  from  all  the  gaping 
tombs  there  rises  gradually  an  efflorescence  at  first  frail 
and  timid,  like  steam;  then  white  and  virginal  and  more 
and  more  tufty,  more  and  more  tall  and  plentiful  and  mar- 
vellous. Little  by  little,  irresistibly  invading  all  things,  it 
transforms  the  graveyard  into  a  sort  of  fairy-like  and  nup- 
tial garden,  over  which  rise  the  first  rays  of  the  dawn.  The 
dew  glitters,  the  flowers  open  their  blooms,  the  wind  mur- 
murs in  the  leaves,  the  bees  hum,  the  birds  wake  and  flood 
the  air  with  the  first  raptures  of  their  hymns  to  the  sun  and 
to  life.  Stunned  and  dazzled,  TYLTYL  and  MYTYL,  holding 
each  other  by  the  hand,  take  a  few  steps  among  the  Jlowers 
while  they  seek  for  the  trace  of  the  tombs.} 

MYTYL  (looking  in  the  grass] :  Where  are  the  dead  ? 

TYLTYL  (looking  also}:  There  are  no  dead.  .  .  . 

Lines  like  these  boom  and  rumble,  as  it  were. 
It  is  hard  for  an  unprepared  audience  to  get 
their  real  import  from  two  squeaky-voiced 
little  girls  standing  among  limelit  canvas  lilies. 

The  players,  no  less  than  the  writers,  have 
their  trouble  in  striking  the  proper  fantastic 
note.  When  "The  Blue  Bird"  was  played  here 


Second  Nights 


at  the  New  Theatre,  the  matter-of-fact — even 
snippishly  cynical — Fairy  Berylune  seemed  an 
example  of  this.  Berylune  had  a  hooked  nose 
and  a  humped  back,  but  everybody  knows 
that  good  fairies  are  lovely  princesses  under- 
neath. Naturally,  Berylune  insisted  on  her 
beauty. 

"And  my  hair,  do  you  see  that?"  and  she 
holds  out  two  lean  gray  wisps.  "It's  fair  as  the 
corn  in  the  fields;  it's  like  virgin  gold!  .  .  . 
And  I've  such  heaps  and  heaps  of  it  that  it 
weighs  my  head  down.  ...  A  little  ?  Sheaves ! 
Armfuls!  Clusters!  Waves  of  gold!" 

This  isn't  joking.  It  is  the  very  battle-cry  of 
idealism — the  children's  own  brave  gift  of 
make-believe.  Wonder  and  mystery  and  beauty 
— the  beauty  of  Melisande  herself  leaning  from 
her  window  in  the  moonlight — must  be  thrown 
into  it,  hinted  at  somehow.  Mrs.  Hale  snipped 
off  the  whole  scene  exactly  as  if  she  were  play- 
ing a  dry,  satirical,  old-maidish  part  in  realistic 
comedy,  and  these  children  were  the  proper 
target  for  humorous  irony — exactly,  as  far  as 
point  of  view  went,  as  she  used  to  play  Prossy 
in  "Candida."  It  was  just  this  necessary  note 
of  tenderness  and  wonder  which  made  Miss 
[  102  ] 


The  Hidden  Meaning 


Wycherly's  Light  in  the  same  play  so  pleasing 
—perhaps  because  Miss  Wycherly,  in  some  of 
the  poetic  Irish  plays,  had  had  experience  with 
a  similar  sort  of  thing  before. 

The  climax  of  the  first  act  of  Maeterlinck's 
"Mary  Magdalene,"  in  which  the  voice  of 
Christ  is  heard,  is  typical  of  this  difference  be- 
tween drama  acted  and  drama  read.  "An  in- 
comparable silence,  in  which  it  seems  as  though 
the  birds  and  the  leaves  of  the  trees  and  the 
very  air  that  is  breathed  take  part,  falls  with 
all  its  supernatural  weight  upon  the  country- 
side, and  in  this  silence,  which  weighs  upon 
people  on  the  terrace  also,  there  rises,  absolute 
sovereign  of  space  and  the  hour,  a  wonderful 
voice,  soft,  and  all-powerful,  intoxicated  with 
ardor,  light,  and  love,  distant  and  yet  near  to 
every  heart  and  present  in  every  soul."  In  the 
theatre  all  the  spectator  hears,  of  course,  is  an 
ordinary  stage  voice  speaking  from  the  wings. 

The  raising  of  Lazarus  from  the  dead  is 
described  with  great  eloquence  by  the  Roman 
witnesses,  and  we  hear  how  "women,  children, 
and  especially  the  older  men,  exulted  franti- 
cally. It  was  as  though  they  were  trampling  on 
death  which  the  god  had  just  conquered  and 
[  103  ] 


Second  Nights 


laid  low  for  the  first  time  since  man  came  into 
existence."  Yet  when  Lazarus  appears,  a  pale 
and  melancholy  young  man,  this  exultant  note 
is  lost.  On  the  other  hand,  if  he  came  romping 
on  the  stage,  alive  and  beaming,  the  specta- 
tor's instinct  (which  has  nothing  to  do  with 
what  he  may  know)  would  promptly  object 
that  such  a  healthy  man  never  really  was  dead. 

The  difficulty  of  expressing  a  poetic  idea  in 
the  visual  action  of  the  stage  has  been  too  fre- 
quently pointed  out  to  need  elucidation  here. 
What  is  generally  called  "poetic  drama,"  with 
its  artificial  speech,  lack  of  dramatic  progress, 
and  the  long  descriptive  passages  once  needed 
to  supply  the  atmosphere  and  now  produced 
with  scenery  and  electric  lighting,  is  likely  to 
be  scarcely  more  than  an  interesting  curiosity 
on  the  modern  stage.  There  is  no  less  poetry, 
the  appeal  is  no  less  emotional,  and  carries  us 
no  less  deeply  into  the  inner  beauties,  ironies, 
and  meanings  of  life — and  Ibsen,  Barrie,  and 
Synge  all  carry  us  in  their  different  ways— 
but  the  form,  if  not  prose,  is  at  least  less 
often  epic,  closer  to  our  natural  speech  and 
mood. 

Stephen  Phillips  has  succeeded  in  joining 

[  104  1 


The  Hidden  Meaning 


what  might  be  called  old-fashioned  poetic 
drama  to  the  contemporary  stage,  and  in  such 
a  play  as  "Herod"  it  almost  seems  his  natural 
mode  of  expression;  his  blank  verse  is,  at  least, 
no  cloak  for  mere  literariness,  for  vacuity  that 
would  be  unmasked  in  prose.  He  does  not 
merely  label  pale  abstractions  and  ask  us  to 
accept  them  as  great  because  they  bear  great 
names.  His  Herod  has  a  quality  of  great- 
ness. When  the  mob  breaks  into  his  palace  he 
meets  it,  bluffs  and  bullies  it  back,  as  a  capa- 
ble tyrant  would.  And  when  he  stalks  down 
among  them  at  last  and  thunders,  "These 
veins  are  rivers!  And  these  arteries  are  very 
roads!  This  body  is  your  country!"  and  dares 
any  of  them  to  strike,  the  spectator  is  con- 
vinced that  were  he  one  of  the  mob  he,  too, 
would  slink  away. 

It  is  at  the  moment  that  the  Queen  is  being 
murdered— "Herod  shall  kill  the  thing  he 
loves  best"— that  Caesar's  messenger  arrives 
to  announce  the  new  territory  granted  Herod, 
and  the  latter,  drunk  with  exultation,  bounds 
up  the  stairs  toward  the  golden  doors  behind 
which  Mariamne  lies  dead,  shouting  out  the 
news:  "Hippo,  Samaria  and  Godara  and  high- 

1 105 1 


Second  Nights 


walled  Joppa!"  There  is  a  real  fight  between 
his  love  for  Mariamne  and  his  lust  for  power 
—as  real  as  to-day's  story  of  some  ruthless 
speculator  who  corners  the  wheat  market  and 
loses  his  wife's  affection.  Lifted,  as  it  is,  into 
the  region  of  poetry,  it  yet  comes  across  the 
footlights  in  the  quick  action  and  compact, 
highly  vitalized  speech  necessary  for  the  stage. 

Observe  the  adroit  movement  of  this  first 
act.  The  young  priest,  Mariamne's  brother, 
all  radiance  and  joy,  is  borne  in  by  the  ac- 
claiming populace.  Herod  watches,  eyes  smoul- 
dering with  suspicion.  Gradually  we  see  these 
suspicions  fanned  to  flame.  The  boy,  dear  as  he 
is  to  Mariamne,  must  be  killed.  He  starts  for 
the  bathing  pool.  Does  he  know  the  waters? 
Oh,  yes,  quite  well.  But  are  there  no  rushes 
that  might  pull  him  down  ?  He  fears  no  rushes, 
he  is  a  strong  swimmer.  And  away  he  goes, 
followed,  at  a  sign  from  Herod,  by  Sohemus, 
the  sinister  Gaul. 

And  then  Mariamne  enters  and  entreats 
Herod — who  is  going  to  meet  the  Romans 
that  night — to  spend  these  last  moments  with 
her.  They  talk  fondly  in  the  fading  daylight 
and  walk  up  the  steps  through  the  golden 
[  106] 


The  Hidden  Meaning 


doors  in  each  other's  arms.  Twilight  comes, 
and  with  it  some  of  Mariamne's  maidens 
emerge  from  the  palace  to  breathe  the  first 
evening's  coolness.  The  irony  becomes  more 
grim,  as,  with  the  tragedy  still  in  suspense, 
they  dreamily  welcome  the  coming  night.  You 
can  fairly  feel  the  baked  walls  and  the  bur- 
den of  the  tropic  day  in  their  faint  voices  and 
languid  gestures.  The  night-breeze  begins  to 
stir—  "There  is  mercy  from  the  West"  —and 
one  of  them,  leaning  back  toward  it,  laughs  in 
low  delight  as  it  lifts  her  hair.  Another  throws 
out  her  arms — this  whole  scene  is  a  striking 
example  of  poetic  description  given  the  neces- 
sary semblance  of  action — and  breathes  in 
"the  low  long  a-a-ah  of  foliage." 

The  maidens  vanish  and  Mariamne  and  the 
King  come  out  into  the  night.  Can  anything 
weaken  her  love  for  him?  Herod  demands 
again  and  again.  And  far  in  the  distance  a 
faint  moaning  is  heard,  which  comes  nearer  and 
nearer  until  the  body  of  Mariamne's  brother  is 
brought  in,  followed  by  its  mourners.  Through- 
out, Mr.  Phillips  not  only  writes  as  a  poet  but 
as  one  thoroughly  able  to  use  the  special  tech- 
nic  of  the  stage. 

[  107  ] 


Second  Nights 


Such  a  scene  as  that  in  the  last  act  of  "  Peer 
Gynt,"  where  the  incorrigible  old  egoist,  re- 
turning home,  at  last,  after  his  lifetime  of  self- 
ishness, is  confronted,  in  the  shape  of  withered 
leaves  flying  before  the  wind  and  cold  drops 
dripping  from  branches  of  dead  trees,  with  the 
tears  he  should  have  shed,  the  songs  he  might 
have  sung — is  frankly  poetry,  scarcely  in- 
tended for  the  stage. 

The  more  common  characteristic  of  Ibsen, 
however,  is  his  genius  for  revealing  almost 
limitless  imaginative  backgrounds  through  the 
simplest  surfaces.  We  do  not  see  the  train 
wrecked  on  the  stage  and  the  heroine  rescued 
in  the  nick  of  time,  but  when  a  maid-servant 
in  an  adjoining  room  makes  a  slight  exclama- 
tion and  a  woman  on  the  stage  raises  her 
arms  and  whispers  "Ghosts!"  the  audience  is 
held  as  if  the  author  had  it  by  a  literal  throat. 

Behind  the  tangible  result  looms  the  remote 
spiritual  cause,  through  the  visible  action  is 
always  felt  the  play  of  vaster,  vaguer  forces. 
And  the  creepiness  of  these  forces  is  increased 
by  the  untheatrical  surfaces  through  which 
we  see  them.  It  is  as  if  they  came  rumbling 
through  in  spite  of  the  author's  and  actors* 
[  108  ] 


The  Hidden  Meaning 


determination  to  be  absolutely  natural  and 
matter-of-fact.  Whether  he  is  using  a  sort  of 
reverse  pantograph,  as  he  did  in  "Rosmers- 
holm"  —  where,  behind  the  drama  on  the  stage, 
we  see  the  outline  of  a  larger  drama  which 
happened  years  ago — or  whether  he  is  em- 
ploying out-and-out  symbolism,  Ibsen  is  mas- 
ter magician  of  the  "hidden  meaning."  No 
one  else  can  combine  with  the  same  acrid 
force  the  visible  and  invisible,  and  with  a  few 
plain-spoken  words  clutch  the  very  souls  of 
his  hearers  and  make  them  squirm. 

Not  every  one  enjoys  squirming,  of  course. 
One  of  the  characters  in  Pinero's  "Trelawney 
of  the  Wells"  objected  to  the  modern  drama 
because  it  "reminded  him  of  his  relatives." 
Most  of  Ibsen's  plays  do  more  than  that;  they 
remind  one  of  one's  self.  It  was  not  the  explod- 
ing boilers,  three-alarm  fires,  and  so  on  that  in- 
terested him,  but  the  dramas  that  went  on  in- 
side people's  heads — those  "little  gnawing 
things,"  as  the  Rat  Wife  said,  which  are  so 
much  worse  than  the  things  that  get  into  the 
papers.  As  nearly  every  one  has  such  things  in 
his  house,  Ibsen's  plays  hit  people  "where  they 
lived";  and  as  he  felt,  moreover,  that  the 
[  109  ] 


Second  Nights 


safe-breakers,  cutthroats,  and  pop-gun  ruffians 
generally  had  been  shivered  at  long  enough, 
and  that  it  was  time  to  give  the  so-called  he- 
roes a  chance,  and  show  how  much  misery 
they  may  cause  with  their  generally  approved 
ideas  like  patriotism  or  self-sacrifice,  shrieks 
of  anguish  and  protest  promptly  filled  the 
air.  A  smasher  of  idols,  he  turned  people's 
sentimentalities  against  themselves,  and  this 
seemed  a  sort  of  treason  and  excessively  "un- 
pleasant" before  the  idea  was  grasped  that  a 
tonic  need  not  become  a  complete  diet,  nor 
negative  criticism  a  programme  of  life.  When 
this  is  understood,  the  appetite  for  Ibsen 
grows  with  what  it  feeds  on.  One  welcomes 
that  acrid  flavor  after  the  usual  sweets;  there 
is  a  fascination  in  those  harmless-looking  sur- 
faces which  might  well  bear  warnings :  "  Look 
out!  Live  wire!" 

The  first  act  of  "The  Master  Builder"  is  an 
excellent  example  of  Ibsen's  skill  in  combining 
subtleties  within  subtleties  with  the  simplest, 
most  understandable — and  playable — technic 
—a  fact  brought  home  to  me  with  curious 
force  one  day  when  I  saw  it  played  at  a 
"benefit,"  sandwiched  in  between  a  scene  from 

[    "0] 


The  Hidden  Meaning 


musical  comedy  and  an  act  from  some  rat- 
tling, mechanical  farce.  The  gnawing  things 
in  Master  Builder  Solness's  house,  it  will  be 
remembered,  are  those  found  under  many 
another  man's  roof,  artist  or  no — the  never- 
ending  struggle  to  grasp  the  unattainable, 
dread  of  the  day  when  he  must  give  way  to 
younger  men.  Nor  has  Solness  paid  his  price 
alone.  The  two  Broviks,  father  and  son,  also 
architects,  are  in  his  employ.  The  father  he 
has  forced  out  of  business,  the  son  he  will 
not  permit  to  do  original  work  lest  he  become 
a  rival.  Then  there  is  Kaia,  Brovik's  niece, 
bookkeeper  for  Solness,  and  although  en- 
gaged to  young  Brovik,  fairly  worshipping 
the  Master  Builder  and  trembling  if  he  so 
much  as  looks  at  her.  And  there  is  Aline, 
Solness's  wife. 

When  they  were  just  starting  out  in  life,  her 
mother's  house,  which  had  been  given  them 
to  live  in,  burned  down.  All  the  old  portraits 
were  burned  on  the  walls,  the  old  silk  dresses, 
her  mother's  and  grandmother's  lace — no 
other  house  could  be  quite  the  same  to  Mrs. 
Solness.  The  fright,  and  the  fever  into  which 
she  fell  afterward,  shook  her  terribly.  Their 


Second  Nights 


two  little  boys — babies  then — died.  They 
never  had  any  other  children.  Yet  it  was  this 
very  burning  of  the  old  house  which  gave  the 
young  builder  his  first  start.  It  seemed,  as  he 
thought  it  over  years  after,  as  if  his  wife's 
vocation  had  to  be  stunted  and  crushed  and 
shattered  in  order  that  his  might  force  its  way 
to  a  sort  of  great  victory.  "For  you  must 
know,"  Solness  explained  to  Hilda,  "that 
Aline — she,  too,  had  a  talent  for  building.  Not 
houses  and  towers  and  spires — for  building  up 
the  souls  of  little  children,  Hilda.  For  build- 
ing up  children's  souls  in  perfect  balance  and 
in  noble  and  beautiful  forms.  For  enabling 
them  to  soar  up  into  erect  and  full-grown 
human  souls.  That  was  Aline's  talent.  And 
there  it  all  lies  now — unused  and  unusable 
forever — of  no  earthly  service  to  any  one- 
just  like  the  ruins  left  by  a  fire." 

His  wife,  the  Broviks,  poor,  trembling  Kaia 
—all  these  had  to  be  sacrificed  to  his  work. 
"All  that  I  have  succeeded  in  doing,  build- 
ing, and  creating,  all  the  beauty,  the  security, 
cheerful  comfort — ay,  and  magnificence  too — 
all  this  I  have  to  make  up  for,  to  pay  for— 
not  in  money,  but  in  human  happiness.  And 


The  Hidden  Meaning 


not  with  my  own  happiness  only,  but  with 
other  people's  too.  Yes,  yes,  do  you  see  that, 
Hilda  ?  That  is  the  price  which  my  position  as 
an  artist  has  cost  me — and  others.  And  every 
single  day  I  have  to  look  on  while  the  price 
is  paid  for  me  anew.  Over  again,  and  over  again 
—and  over  again  forever!" 

Such  is  the  situation  in  the  Master  Builder's 
house  as  the  play  begins — just  as  the  convic- 
tion begins  to  creep  over  Solness  that  a  crisis 
is  approaching,  that  at  last  his  good  luck  is 
about  to  turn.  Nonsense,  says  Doctor  Herdal, 
the  old  architect's  friend,  what  should  make 
the  luck  turn?  The  younger  generation,  an- 
swers Solness  firmly.  The  doctor  tries  to  laugh 
these  forebodings  away,  but  Solness  cannot 
be  shaken. 

"The  luck  will  turn,"  he  repeats,  "I  know 
it.  I  feel  the  day  approaching.  Some  one  or 
other  will  take  it  into  his  head  to  say:  'Give  me 
a  chance!'  And  then  all  the  rest  will  come 
clamoring  after  him  and  shake  their  fists  at  me 
and  shout:  'Make  room — make  room — make 
room!'  Yes,  doctor,  presently  the  younger 
generation  will  come  knocking  at  my 
door- 


Second  Nights 


And  at  that  instant,  with  a  hundred  vague 
potentialities  crowding  in  on  the  audience's 
mind,  there  is  a  knock  on  the  door  and  when 
it  opens  there  stands  a  young  girl,  alpen- 
stock in  hand  and  a  curiously  bright  look  in 
her  eyes,  fresh  as  the  morning,  relentless  as 
fate.  Hilda  is  a  flesh-and-blood  girl  then  and 
throughout  the  play,  and  the  new  tower  from 
which,  after  she  has  inspired  him  to  build  and 
climb  it,  Solness  falls  to  his  death,  is,  for  pur- 
poses of  the  stage,  a  real  tower.  But  she  is  the 
younger  generation,  too;  the  eternal  and  in- 
satiable desire  to  create,  to  build  higher— 
what  you  will,  depending  on  one's  understand- 
ing and  experience.  Ibsen  is,  himself,  the  mas- 
ter builder  in  this  sort  of  construction — this 
welding  of  the  unseen  to  the  visible  action  of 
the  stage,  so  that  the  mere  bright  face  of  a 
young  girl  may  be  a  tragedy,  and  a  light  tap 
on  the  door  strike  like  a  thunderbolt. 


VI 

SOME    WOMEN    PLAY- 
WRITERS 


9*1 


ONCE  or  twice  in  a  season  there  bobs  up  a 
little  play,  by  an  unknown  author,  gener- 
ally, and  short-lived,  which  shows  that  very 
thing  so  many  plays,  even  successful  ones, 
lack  —  some  understanding  of  the  manners 
and  customs  of  ordinary  civilized  people  in 
such  a  city  as  New  York.  So  far  as  this 
knowledge  is  concerned,  many  of  them  might 
have  been  composed  by  Patagonians  or  Es- 
kimos. 

A  well-cast  company  and  intelligent  stage 
management  may  have  as  much  to  do  with 
this  quality  as  the  author,  but  it  is,  at  any 
rate,  rare  enough  always  to  be  noticed  and 
gratefully  remembered.  Such  a  quiet  little 
piece  was  "Keeping  Up  Appearances,"  by 
Mr.  Butler  Davenport,  which  appeared  for  a 
few  evenings  in  the  autumn  of  1910. 

We  were  admitted  here  to  the  hearthstone 
of  a  family  trying  to  keep  up  rather  ambitious 


Second  Nights 


appearances  on  nothing  a  year.  The  mother,  a 
woman  of  intellectual  force  and  fine  feeling, 
was  its  responsible  member.  To  her  fell  the 
task  of  doing  the  sewing  and  otherwise  making 
possible  the  social  progress  of  her  two  clever 
but  shallow  daughters,  to  maintain  the  illu- 
sion of  domestic  happiness,  although  her  rake 
of  a  husband  found  his  pleasures  elsewhere. 
The  son,  a  boy  in  college,  was  her  one  real 
moral  support. 

Here  was  a  situation  with  plenty  of  potential 
tragedy,  and  it  was  set  forth  and  concluded 
with  such  naturalness  and  authenticity  that 
those  disturbed  by  the  lack  of  such  qualities 
(and  I  presume  that  critics  are  more  so  dis- 
turbed than  the  occasional  theatregoer,  who 
pays  real  money  for  his  ticket  and  demands, 
perhaps  not  unnaturally,  to  be  "thrilled"  in 
return)  might  easily  have  been  satisfied  and 
forgotten  that  "Keeping  Up  Appearances" 
was  scarcely,  in  the  other's  sense  of  the  word, 
a  play  at  all. 

A  little  English  play,  Mr.  Cosmo  Hamilton's 
"The  Blindness  of  Virtue,"  was  pleasant  for 
this  same  quality,  as  English  plays — partly, 
doubtless,  because  of  the  more  definite  strati- 

[  116] 


Some  Women  Play-Writers 


fication  of  English  society — are  likely  to  be, 
especially  when  acted  by  an  English  company. 
We  were  taken  into  an  English  vicarage  and 
made  to  feel  at  once  not  only  that  the  author 
was  familiar  with  its  sheltered  life,  but  that 
the  players  were,  too.  This  might  be  the  actual 
Vicar  of  East  Brenton,  Middlesex,  and  this  his 
brisk,  capable,  tactful  wife.  So  might  Effie  be 
his  daughter,  and  young  Mr.  Archibald  Gra- 
ham, sent  down  to  "read"  with  the  Vicar, 
actually  an  Etonian  and  a  recent  student  at 
Oxford.  The  clothes  worn  by  the  two  \vomen— 
the  gray  sweater,  the  simple  cotton  dress — no 
appeal  to  the  gallery  here — were  just  such 
things  as  simple,  well-bred  folk,  sure  of  their 
position,  might  be  expected  to  wear  at  home 
in  the  country. 

While  such  things  have  little  to  do  with 
dramatic  values — and  the  play  itself  was 
scarcely  more  than  a  tract — they  have  a  good 
deal  to  do  with  the  spectator's  pleasure.  It  is 
pleasant  to  feel  at  home  even  in  the  theatre, 
and  conceivable  that  more  enjoyment  may  be 
found  in  the  peaceful,  even  parochial,  adven- 
tures of  such  genuine  human  beings  than  in 
the  startling  evolutions  of  the  brassy  savages 


Second  Nights 


created,  for  instance,  by  a  Mr.  Henri  Bern- 
stein. 

Mr.  Charles  Klein  can  be  counted  on  to  pre- 
sent vivid  examples  of  how  not  to  make  char- 
acters behave,  "gripping"  as  his  situations 
sometimes  may  be.  The  inmates  of  his  Fifth 
Avenue  " mansions"  ne'er  existed  on  sea  or 
land,  and  his  politer  characters  generally,  in 
their  more  offhand  colloquial  moments,  seem 
to  be  quoting  from  bad  editorials. 

Young  Stedman,  in  'The  Daughters  of 
Men,"  was  as  likely  as  not  in  the  middle  of  an 
impassioned  love-scene  to  interject  a  hundred- 
word  speech  beginning:  "The  great  masses  are 
utterly  ignorant  of  the,"  etc.,  etc.  The  heroine 
in  "The  Lion  and  the  Mouse,"  returning  from 
Europe  to  find  her  father — a  judge  who  had 
incurred  a  capitalist's  displeasure  by  handing 
down  decisions  adverse  to  corporate  interests 
—shoved  off  into  a  shabby  suburb,  endeavored 
to  cheer  him  with  a  "How  I  dislike  New  York, 
with  its  retinue  of  servants  and  its  domestic 
and  social  responsibilities."  When  the  shop- 
girl's employer,  in  "Maggie  Pepper,"  offered 
to  still  the  unfounded  gossip  about  them  by 
making  her  his  wife,  "The  thought  of  duty, 

[  118] 


Some  Women  Play-Writers 


reparation,  or  moral  compulsion  as  a  motive 
for  marriage,"  etc.,  etc.,  delivered  in  Miss 
Rose  Stahl's  best  "Say,  Kid,  on  the  level!" 
tone — was  what  the  slangy  Maggie  was  sup- 
posed to  say. 

Mr.  J.  E.  Goodman's  play,  "Mother,"  gen- 
uine in  many  ways,  was  marred  by  just  such 
ineptitude.  The  theme  was  a  mother's  love- 
blind,  complete — for  her  children,  and  getting 
a  firm  hold  on  this,  the  author  kept  pegging 
at  it  until  the  aisles  were  fairly  running  with 
happy  tears.  Yet  the  charming  daughter  just 
from  college  displayed  a  strident  slanginess 
which  might  have  been  acquired  at  some 
School  for  Female  Boiler  Makers.  The  air  was 
filled  with  such  gems  as  "Is  there  anything  be- 
tween you?"  "Well,  it  beats  everything, 
don't  it?"  -"Looks  like  he  had  a  case  on 
her!"  And  the  mother,  with  what  was  appar- 
ently intended  as  engaging  homeliness,  came 
in  from  mixing  pie-crust  in  the  kitchen  to 
brush  her  flour-covered  fingers  on  the  parlor 
carpet. 

The  importance  of  such  things  lies  not,  of 
course,  in  their  lack  of  refinement,  but  in  their 
untruth.  These  particular  people  would  not 


Second  Nights 


have  acted  thus,  and  the  author  found  wrong 
in  one  place  is  suspected  in  another. 

If  there  were  more  women  playwrights  and 
stage-managers,  this  quality  of  domestic  au- 
thenticity might  not  be  so  rare — if  a  woman 
had  been  the  author  of  "Mother,"  for  in- 
stance, the  mother  of  the  play  would  not,  one 
surmises,  have  attempted  to  win  the  sympa- 
thy of  her  audience  in  quite  that  pie-crusty 
way.  Yet  the  successful  plays  by  women  on 
our  stage  of  late  years  have  dealt,  interest- 
ingly enough,  less  with  the  quiet  but  tragic 
situations  encountered  by  ordinary  husbands 
and  wives  in  the  mere  business  of  living  than 
with  farce,  like  "Seven  Days"  or  "Baby 
Mine"  (the  warm  motherliness  and  quaint 
fancy  of  Miss  Eleanor  Gates's  "The  Poor  Lit- 
tle Rich  Girl"  is  an  exception)  or  with  the 
adaptation  to  the  stage  of  more  serious  situ- 
ations which  other  women  have  already  set 
forth  in  novels. 

The  conjunction  of  novelist  and  play  car- 
pentress,  as  in  Miss  Charlotte  Thompson's 
adaptation  of  Mrs.  Deland's  "The  Awakening 
of  Helena  Ritchie"  and  Kate  Douglas  Wig- 
gin's  "Rebecca  of  Sunnybrook  Farm,"  has 
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often,  however,  been  most  happy  and  now 
and  then  brought  out  those  very  qualities 
which  in  the  ordinary  man's  play  are  so  often 
missed. 

Miss  Alcott's  "Little  Women,"  which  Miss 
Marion  De  Forest  and  Miss  Jessie  Bonstelle 
turned  into  a  play,  was  an  especially  interest- 
ing example  of  this.  It  isn't  often  at  the  theatre 
that  we  get  a  chance  to  look  into  a  character- 
istic American  home.  Very  few  stage  people 
appear  to  have  been  "raised"  anywhere.  They 
simply  spring,  full-grown,  from  the  incandes- 
cent dome  of  the  author  of  the  play.  They 
have,  so  to  speak,  no  relatives,  no  home  towns. 
Vivid  and  impressive,  often,  when  looked  at 
from  the  front,  a  little  examination  reveals 
that  they  are  all  length  and  breadth  and  no 
thickness.  They  do  not  reach  into  anything. 

Here  the  usual  thing  was  reversed.  Here  was 
a  great  deal  of  family  and  only  a  little  play- 
here  was  the  home  which  the  people  in  so 
many  of  our  plays  seem  never  to  have  known. 

Among  the  weird  stage  ladies  Broadway 
knows  so  well — the  cream-puff  variety,  on  the 
one  hand,  or  the  shrieking  sort,  who  keep  wav- 
ing their  sex  at  the  world  as  a  Dutch  windmill 


Second  Nights 


waves  its  arms  in  half  a  gale — there  was  some- 
thing peculiarly  refreshing  in  the  sight  and 
sound  of  a  girl  like  Jo — devoted,  ardent,  yet 
clear-headed  and  clean-hearted,  and  as  amus- 
ingly disdainful  of  the  obviously  sentimental 
as  a  schoolboy  playing  football.  Something  of 
the  "earnest  of  the  north  wind"  was  felt  when- 
ever she  spoke — something  often  forgotten  in 
the  brassy  glare  of  Broadway.  As  a  contribu- 
tion to  dramatic  art,  "Little  Women"  was  of 
little  importance;  as  a  contribution  to  civili- 
zation through  the  medium  of  the  stage,  some- 
thing for  the  whole  family,  big  and  little,  to 
enjoy,  very  important  indeed. 

The  more  successful  original  plays  by  Amer- 
ican women  have  inclined  toward  farce,  and 
if  these  differed  from  similar  work  by  men  the 
difference  lay,  perhaps,  in  a  certain  ruthless- 
ness  toward  their  own  sex  and  toward  matters 
likely  to  be  treated  by  men  sentimentally. 
Both  Miss  Margaret  Mayo's  "Baby  Mine" 
and  Mrs.  Rida  Johnson  Young's  "The  Lottery 
Man"  seemed  to  give  point  to  Mr.  Kipling's 
pleasantries  about  "the  deadlier  sex." 

In  "The  Lottery  Man"  a  great  deal  of  the 
supposed  fun  was  at  the  expense  of  a  pain- 

[    122    ] 


Some  Women  Play-Writers 


fully  emaciated  female,  companion  of  a  fat 
woman  trying  to  "reduce"  and  winner  of  the 
lottery  ticket  supposed  to  entitle  her  to  a  hus- 
band (a  young  newspaper  man,  in  order  to  get 
a  "story,"  had  raffled  himself  off  at  one  dollar 
a  chance).  In  real  life  the  poor  creature  would 
be  pathetic,  to  say  the  least,  but  here  her 
physical  imperfections,  her  not  unnatural  de- 
sire for  a  husband,  and  the  blandishments  she 
lavished  on  the  unhappy  hero  were  exploited 
by  the  relentless  authoress  to  the  last  degree. 

In  Miss  Mayo's  play,  which  enjoyed  an 
enormous  commercial  success,  a  young  mar- 
ried couple  separate  after  a  trifling  quarrel 
and  the  husband  goes  to  live  in  another  city. 
The  wife,  a  silly  little  person  whose  shallow- 
ness  and  petty  deceptions  have  brought  about 
the  trouble  with  her  more  earnest  husband,  is 
soon  overwhelmed  with  loneliness.  She  has  a 
council  of  war  with  her  best  friend  and  they 
concoct  this  brilliant  plan — they  will  borrow  a 
baby  from  the  foundling's  home  and  send 
word  to  the  husband  that  he  has  become  a 
father. 

The  plan  succeeds  only  too  well.  The  en- 
thusiastic father  arrives  before  the  baby.  He 
[  123  ] 


Second  Nights 


has  scarcely  been  put  off  long  enough  for  an 
infant  to  be  secured,  before  the  Italian  mother, 
from  whom  it  was  unceremoniously  borrowed, 
wildly  demands  it  back.  Ere  a  second  baby 
can  be  substituted  the  astonished  but  still  de- 
lighted father  enters  and  finds  that  he  is  the 
parent  of  twins.  This  is  no  sooner  explained 
than  the  second  baby's  real  father — a  husky 
Irish  truck  driver — demands  his  offspring  and 
again  before  a  successful  substitution  can  be 
made  the  dazed  but  still  happy  young  man 
finds  three  children  on  his  hands.  And  finally, 
after  the  well-meaning  friend  has  been  arrested 
as  a  Black-Hand  kidnapper,  and  the  real  and 
the  false  parents  are  brought  together  in  a 
farcically  tempestuous  scene,  the  curtain  goes 
down,  as  the  young  husband,  giving  a  last 
shriek  of  bewilderment,  discovers  that  he  has 
no  children  at  all. 

The  farcical  possibilities  of  the  idea  are 
obvious,  and  Miss  Mayo,  who  knows  the  stage 
backward  and  forward,  handled  them  with  in- 
genuity and  the  crispest  technic.  The  piece 
was  played  with  great  snap  and  spirit,  and  if 
one  could  abide  the  distressing  vulgarity  of 
the  pretended  mother  it  might  have  made  an 
[  124  ] 


Some  Women  Play-Writers 


agreeable,  as  it  certainly  did  an  hilarious, 
evening's  entertainment. 

One  could  imagine  a  suburban  settlement, 
one  of  those  cloistered  regions  of  quiet  green 
lawns  and  baby  carriages,  where  such  a  piece 
might  be  written  and  played  by  the  members 
of  a  Young  Mothers'  Club  as  a  refreshing  pro- 
test against  a  too-continuous  restriction  to  the 
society  of  sterilized  bottles  and  modified  milk. 
So  might  the  officers  in  some  lonely  army  post 
during  a  Christmas  blizzard  concoct  a  roaring 
farce  on  the  subject  of  throwing  down  your 
guns  and  running  away  from  the  enemy. 

Broadway  is  another  sort  of  place,  and  it 
was  another  thing  to  hear  motherhood  ridi- 
culed through  three  acts  by  a  shallow-pated 
coquette,  quite  ready  to  assume  its  appear- 
ances as  she  would  use  rouge  or  some  new  scent 
to  arouse  the  languid  ardor  of  her  husband. 
And  to  see  this  precious  young  woman  powder 
her  nose  and  bounce  joyfully  into  her  pink  bed 
with  a  "Now  turn  my  rose-lights  on  me!" 
and,  with  the  audience  honking  its  apprecia- 
tion, dispose  herself  in  the  fashion  best  suited 
to  allure  them  and  appeal  to  the  sympathies 
of  a  susceptible  father,  was  calculated  to  get 

[  125 1 


Second  Nights 


a  bit  too  much  on  one's  nerves  to  permit  of 
that  open  mind  necessary  to  the  enjoyment 
even  of  farce. 

Miss  Mayo,  who  is  Mrs.  Edgar  Selwyn,  was 
also  author  of  that  genial  little  piece,  "  Polly  of 
the  Circus."  The  little  bareback  rider's  mother 
had  been  killed  by  falling  from  a  trapeze  after 
riding  bareback  for  years.  "Now  what  d'you 
think  o'  that?"  she  demanded,  "Off  a  trapeze 
—and  the  best  rider  in  the  business!  Of  course 
— Pop,  he  was  killed  in  the  lion's  cage.  But 
that  was  legitimate.  That's  where  he  worked" 
There  was  much  of  this  quaint  and  sympa- 
thetic interpretation  of  the  "professional" 
point  of  view — a  kindly  use  of  the  stage, 
amusing  and  worth  while. 

While  men  play-writers  often  stumble  when 
they  venture  into  kitchens  and  quiet  sitting- 
rooms  and  matters  women  better  understand, 
it  is  seldom  that  the  discord  is  so  excruciating 
as  that  struck  now  and  then  by  a  clever  lady, 
when,  relying  on  her  technic,  she  dashes  into 
a  region  peculiarly  masculine,  smiling  and  un- 
afraid. Mrs.  Rida  Johnson  Young  has  made 
almost  a  specialty  of  this  sort  of  exploration, 
and  national  guardsmen,  undergraduates,  and 

[  126] 


Some  Women  Play-Writers 


professional  baseball  players  have  all  enjoyed 
feminization  at  her  hands. 

It  was  in  "Brown  of  Harvard"  that  Mrs. 
Young  attained  her  most  eerie  flight.  It  is  the 
custom,  or  used  to  be,  at  any  rate,  in  the  days 
when  'busses  still  were  running  from  the  bank 
to  Mandalay,  for  the  fortunate  undergradu- 
ates who  occupied  rooms  in  Holworthy  occa- 
sionally to  descend  into  the  Yard  and  indulge 
in  what  was  known — out  of  regard  for  the  tra- 
ditions of  the  outside  world — as  "student-life- 
on-the-grass."  As  an  amusement  it  was  com- 
paratively austere.  One  leaned  against  an 
elm-tree  or  lay  looking  up  at  the  sky,  listen- 
ing to  the  shuffle  of  feet  as  the  men  went  to 
and  from  lectures,  and  wondered  if  it  was 
really  true  that  Oxford  was  the  only  place  in 
the  world  where  loafing  could  be  made  a  fine 
art.  Of  course,  the  thing  could  be  overdone, 
and  it  was  expedient,  in  order  to  disarm  the 
vaguely  deprecating  glances  of  passers-by, 
occasionally  to  nod  to  them  and  smile,  as 
who  should  say,  '"Tis  but  for  the  moment— 
and  in  play." 

In  Mrs.  Young's  play  all  this  was  changed. 
The  soul-depressing  self-consciousness  of  the 

[  127  ] 


Second  Nights 


old  days  was  gone,  the  student  body  had  all 
the  animation  and  care-free  air  of  musical 
comedy.  The  angle  founded  by  Holworthy, 
Stoughton,  and  the  vista  of  the  gymnasium 
had  become  a  sort  of  "Busy  Corner."  Here 
the  undergraduates  gathered  of  a  morning 
and  indulged  in  glees  and  dances;  here  the 
unfortunate  young  woman  discussed  with  the 
errant  wooer  the  likelihood  of  his  "doing  the 
right  thing";  here  the  young  heroine,  from 
one  of  Boston's  Brahmin  families,  was  made 
love  to  and  embraced,  while  a  male  chorus 
in  the  distance  sang  "Fair  Harvard."  In  the 
play  Miss  Ames  was  the  young  lady;  young 
Mr.  Tom  Brown— known  to  his  intimates  as 
"  Kid,"  and  presently  to  step  into  the  Varsity 
boat  at  an  instant's  notice  and  stroke  the 
crew  to  victory — was  the  fortunate  young 
man. 

"What  do  you  like  most  about  me?"  in- 
quired Miss  Ames  as  they  stood  in  front  of 
Holworthy. 

"My  arms,"  replied  that  spirited  young 
man,  suiting  the  action  to  the  word.  It  was 
at  this  moment,  perhaps,  with  "Fair  Har- 
vard" coming  through  the  relentless  sunshine 
[  128  ] 


Some  Women  Play-Writers 


from  round  the  corner  of  Stoughton,  that  one 
felt  most  strongly  the  mutations  of  time. 

Brown  was  a  noble  fellow.  He  helped  a  poor 
"grind"  through  college  without  letting  him 
know  who  was  doing  it,  and  lent  money  to 
Miss  Ames's  brother,  who  replied  by  forging 
Brown's  check.  It  was  Ames  who  got  the 
grind's  sister  into  trouble,  and,  when  the  grind 
had  developed  into  a  stroke-oar,  tried  to 
throw  the  race  to  the  English  crew  by  forcing 
him  to  desert  just  before  the  race.  This  was 
the  great  moment  of  the  play.  The  youth 
and  beauty  of  Boston  and  Cambridge  were 
gathered  at  the  Harvard  boat-house,  the  great 
race  (somewhat  contrary  to  precedent)  being 
rowed  directly  in  front  of  it.  Just  as  the  crew, 
with  the  footlights  illuminating  their  bare 
legs,  were  about  to  leave  the  boat-house, 
Thorne,  the  grind  stroke,  received  a  letter. 
The  villain  hoped  to  unnerve  him  by  revealing 
the  truth  about  his  sister  and  the  fact  that 
she  had  suddenly  left  town. 

Thorne  tore  his  hair  and  bolted  in  pursuit. 

What  to  do?  Who  should  save  the  day?  Why 

not  Brown?  Ah — the  Kid!  Brown — BROWN— 

BROWN!!  Brown  appeared  at  the  head  of 

[  129  ] 


Second  Nights 


the  dressing-room  staircase,  one  hand  pressed 
to  his  forehead,  the  other — like  Monna  Vanna 
in  the  tent — clasping  his  bath-robe  about  his 
throat.  He  leaned  over  the  stairs,  feverishly 
gripped  and  slid  along  the  balustrade — like 
Miss  Marlowe  in  "Barbara  Frietchie" — as  he 
begged  that  this  great  honor  might  not  be 
thrust  upon  him.  The  Cantabrigians,  how- 
ever, with  their  fatal  tendency  to  put  only 
the  socially  eligible  in  the  boat,  insisted  that 
he  should  stroke  them.  What — me  ?  Ah — no— 
NO!  What?  Well — then  here's  to  dear  old 
Harvard!  And  throwing  off  the  bath-robe, 
Brown  bounded  down  the  stairs  and  joined 
the  crew.  As  the  race  was  rowed  on  the  tortu- 
ous Charles,  through  Cambridgeport,  it  must 
have  been  mostly  invisible  to  the  spectators, 
but,  with  characteristic  Harvard  indifference, 
they  kept  right  on  shouting  until  victory  was 
declared  and  the  gifted  Brown  borne  back  on 
the  shoulders  of  his  crew  mates,  kissing  his 
hands  to  the  ladies  in  the  boat-house  gal- 
lery. 

It  seemed  at  the  time  that  something  ought 
to  be  done — that  somebody  should  organize  a 
society.  In  spite  of  the  shrieks  from  Cam- 

[  130  1 


Some  Women  Play-Writers 


bridge,  however,  the  piece  was  liked  by  thou- 
sands and  played  with  commercial  success  all 
over  the  country. 

Miss  Rachel  Crothers  differs  from  some  of 
her  sister  playwrights — the  adapters  and  the 
authors  of  farce — in  combining  with  a  knowl- 
edge of  stage  technic  the  positive  convic- 
tions of  a  thinking  woman  of  her  day.  She 
writes,  that  is  to  say,  not  merely  to  amuse 
or  to  transfer  to  the  theatre  some  one  else's 
ideas,  but  to  express  definite  convictions. 

In  her  first  play,  "The  Three  of  Us,"  she 
took  her  audience  to  a  Nevada  mining-camp 
and  introduced  them  to  a  refreshingly  gen- 
uine young  woman,  who  was  mothering  one 
young  brother,  trying  to  curb  the  surly,  head- 
strong nature  of  the  other,  managing  the  little 
household  on  nothing  a  year,  and  hanging  on, 
meanwhile,  to  the  mining  claim  their  father 
had  left  them  when  he  died.  It  took  courage 
and  tact  and  patience,  and  if  the  girl's  life 
was  brightened  it  was  not  simplified  when 
two  men,  in  their  tiny,  all-together  settlement, 
fell  in  love  with  her. 

In  the  tangle  of  events  which  followed  she 
was  discovered  by  the  one  she  loved,  under 


Second  Nights 


ambiguous  circumstances  dear  to  stage  tra- 
dition, in  the  other  man's  room.  The  situation 
was  as  old  as  the  hills,  but  not  so  Miss 
Crothers's  handling  of  it,  and  it  was  character- 
istic of  what  then  (1906)  might  have  been 
called  her  "advanced"  ideas  that  the  girl  was 
not  in  the  least  dismayed  and  declined  to 
explain,  feeling  that  if  the  man  could  not 
trust  that  she  was  there  for  some  good  and 
sufficient  reason  he  might  go  his  way. 

"The  Coming  of  Mrs.  Patrick,"  which  fol- 
lowed this  little  comedy,  was  particularly  in- 
teresting in  its  first  act. 

The  curtain  rose  on  a  darkened  room — the 
melancholy  front  parlor  of  an  old-fashioned 
New  York  house.  Through  the  gloom  the 
audience  discerned  black-walnut  furniture  up- 
holstered in  shabby  red  plush;  an  ancient 
square  piano,  which  must  never  be  opened 
because  the  invalid's  room  was  just  overhead; 
two  large  chromo  landscapes  in  heavy  frames ; 
a  fireplace  mantel,  iron,  apparently,  and 
painted  and  grained  an  atrocious  brown 
to  represent  marble;  upon  it  two  statuettes 
of  the  pre-Rogers  period.  Outside,  the  stage 
wind  whistled  deliciously;  occasional  bits  of 

[  132  ] 


Some  Women  Play-Writers 


sleet    slapped   the   window-pane.   Obviously, 
little  "joy  of  living"  here. 

Entered  Billy  Lawton,  the  son,  grumbling. 
No  servants  to  open  the  door,  fire  almost  out, 
dinner  not  ready.  He  lit  the  gas,  making  the 
gloomy  room  more  gloomy.  Entered  Mr.  Law- 
ton,  a  sort  of  dried  codfish,  humorless,  mel- 
ancholy. He  slumped  down  by  the  fire,  now 
almost  out,  and  slowly  rubbed  his  stiff  old 
hands.  Entered  the  younger  daughter,  Nina, 
and  her  good-fellow  friend  Miss  Pauline  Shank, 
of  Chicago,  just  in  from  the  matinee — still  nib- 
bling chocolates,  crazy  about  the  hero,  wish- 
ing they  could  go  on  the  stage.  Entered,  from 
her  invalid  mother's  room  above,  Eleanor, 
the  older  daughter.  The  responsibilities  of  this 
unbeautiful  household  were  on  her  shoulders, 
and  they  had  narrowed  and  hardened  rather 
than  sweetened  her.  The  constant  care  of  her 
mother  had  become  a  sort  of  task  which  she 
hugged  to  herself  in  a  sort  of  egoism  of  self- 
renunciation,  oppressed  by  it,  yet  jealous  of 
surrendering  it.  "If"  —so  the  Chicago  girl  sug- 
gested— "some  man  would  kiss  Eleanor  good 
and  hard  once,  I  think  she'd  be  all  right  for 
the  rest  of  her  life." 

[  133  1 


Second  Nights 


Into  this  ghastly  front  parlor,  her  entrance 
duly  led  up  to  by  the  admiring  Doctor  Bruce, 
entered  at  last  the  nurse,  Mrs.  Patrick,  bub- 
bling over  with  cheerfulness,  tact,  vitality, 
and  wholesome  womanliness.  In  a  few  minutes 
she  had  the  fire  blazing,  a  cushion  behind  old 
Mr.  Lawton's  shoulders,  light  glowing  from 
the  long  unused  reading-lamp.  Billy  decided 
to  stay  at  home  instead  of  going  to  a  show. 
The  old  piano  was  opened,  Miss  Shank  played 
a  waltz,  and  Nina  danced  merrily. 

Then  Eleanor,  who  had  withdrawn  for  a 
moment,  re-entered — the  original  Lady  Cold- 
front.  She  was  jealous  of  Mrs.  Patrick — jeal- 
ous of  the  doctor's  admiration  for  her,  irri- 
tated by  the  cheerfulness  which  had  bloomed 
directly  after  her  arrival.  The  playing  stopped. 
The  air  chilled  again.  Mrs.  Patrick  might 
then  go  up-stairs  to  the  invalid.  So  up  they 
went,  these  two — selfishness,  morbid  sense  of 
duty,  repression;  love,  freedom,  cheerful  self- 
expression — the  clashing  motives  of  the  play. 
The  Ibsenites  were  all  a-twitter  as  the  cur- 
tain went  down. 

In  the  next  scene  conventional  melodrama 
poked  up  its  battered  head  and  the  fine,  self- 

[  134] 


Some  Women  Play-Writers 


contained  note  was  lost,  although  the  final 
message  of  the  piece,  that  happiness  comes 
from  expression  rather  than  repression,  giving 
rather  than  holding  back,  was  thoroughly  in 
tune  with  the  author's  point  of  view. 

In  "A  Man's  World"  Miss  Crothers  pre- 
sented a  woman  novelist,  Frank  Ware,  and 
a  newspaper  publisher,  Malcolm  Gaskell,  a 
strong  man  who  knew  what  he  wanted  and 
generally  got  it.  He  loved  the  novelist  and 
wanted  to  marry  her. 

No  play  of  the  year,  perhaps,  introduced 
characters  more  promising  than  these  two— 
the  sophisticated  yet  charming,  intellectual 
woman  and  the  publisher  accustomed  to 
getting  what  he  wanted.  Apparently,  we  were 
about  to  meet  new  issues  and  enter  a  very 
modern  world — the  world  of  a  Mrs.  Pank- 
hurst  or  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward,  for  instance, 
a  Mr.  Harmsworth  or  Mr.  Hearst. 

The  novelist  had  adopted  a  child  some  years 
before  in  Paris,  when  the  unfortunate  girl  who 
had  brought  it  into  the  world  died,  deserted 
by  its  father.  The  little  boy  was  almost  like 
her  own  son,  and  she  firmly  believed  that  his 
father  had  committed  the  worst  offence  of 

1 135 1 


Second  Nights 


which  a  man  could  be  guilty.  It  was  after 
she  had  admitted  her  own  love  for  Gaskell 
that  both  discovered  that  he  was  the  boy's 
father. 

He  made  out  a  good  case  for  himself,  as 
such  cases  go.  And  what  was  done  was  done; 
it  was  not  right  that  the  happiness  of  two  more 
lives  should  be  destroyed.  To  the  doubts  that 
would  not  down — that  he  would  not  have  for- 
given her  were  the  tables  turned  and  that 
she  never  could  escape  the  memory  of  his 
brutal  selfishness — he  answered: 

"This  is  a  man's  world.  Man  sets  the  stand- 
ard for  woman.  He  knows  she's  better  than 
he  is,  and  he  demands  that  she  be — and  if 
she  isn't  she's  got  to  suffer  for  it.  That's  the 
whole  business  in  a  nutshell." 

It  was  on  this  familiar  issue  rather  than  on 
any  new  one  growing  out  of  their  work  in  the 
world  that  the  action  turned.  The  prom- 
ised horizons  scarcely  opened  further.  Miss 
Crothers  stuck  to  her  colors,  nevertheless,  and 
toward  the  time  when  men  and  women  may 
have  more  nearly  the  same  moral  code,  be- 
cause women  will  tolerate  nothing  less,  the 
play  advanced  at  least  one  step.  The  woman 

[  136] 


Some  Women  Play-Writers 


declined  to  yield  her  convictions  and  sent  the 
man  away  as  the  curtain  fell. 

And  one  bit  of  sympathetic  realism — the 
unsuccessful  girl  artist — deserved  special  men- 
tion. It  was  a  type  familiar  enough  in  New 
York  or  Paris  or  wherever  misdirected  young 
people  gather  to  study  art.  Her  rattle-brained 
talk  about  "her  art,"  the  untidiness  she  mis- 
took for  "temperament/*  her  futile  clinging  to 
the  skirts  of  her  snobbish  relatives  while  try- 
ing to  be  "bohemian,"  was  only  too  true  to 
life.  And  Miss  Helen  Ormsby  played  the  part 
—absurdities  and  all — with  relentless  sincer- 
ity. Indeed,  the  moment  in  which  she  gave 
way  to  the  realization  that  she  had  thrown 
away  ten  years  of  her  life,  that  she  was 
homely,  without  talent,  that  no  man  had 
ever  proposed  to  her  or  ever  would,  that  she 
was  indispensable  to  no  one,  had  a  simple, 
tragic  force  compared  with  which  the  elabo- 
rated horrors  of  a  "Madame  X,"  for  instance, 
seemed  artificial  enough. 

For  her  it  was,  indeed,  a  man's  world.  Any 
little  failure  of  a  man,  she  said,  could  per- 
suade some  sort  of  good  girl  to  marry  him 
and  have  a  home  and  a  place  in  the  world  of 

[  137  ] 


Second  Nights 


his  own.  Nobody  wanted  her,  and  there  was 
nothing  she  could  get  a  grip  on.  "I  almost 
wish,"  she  cried,  "that  I  was  pretty — and 
could  have  my  fling — and  then  die." 

In  "Ourselves"  Miss  Crothers  continued 
her  plea  for  an  equal  moral  code  with  even 
more  determination  and  dramatic  effect.  This 
was  the  story  of  a  fight  to  redeem  a  girl  of 
the  streets,  defeated,  just  as  it  seemed  about 
to  succeed,  by  the  brother  of  the  young  woman 
into  whose  home  the  girl  had  been  taken.  The 
young  man  was  happily  married  but  had  his 
own  ideas  about  the  liberties  he  might  take 
with  women,  provided,  as  he  expressed  it, 
they  meant  nothing  to  him,  involved  "noth- 
ing personal  to  himself." 

Without  sentimentality,  yet  with  penetrat- 
ing sympathy  and  intuition — the  crisp,  ironic 
touch  of  a  good  police  reporter  combined  with 
the  deeper  understanding  of  a  Jane  Addams— 
Miss  Crothers  brought  out  the  pathetic  igno- 
rance of  the  girl  and  most  of  her  kind:  their 
lack  of  realization  of  what  they  had  done,  the 
unutterably  drab  and  meaningless  lives  they 
started  with,  their  poor,  passionate  yearning 
and  groping  for  happiness.  In  the  reform 

[  138] 


Some  Women  Play-Writers 


"home,"  in  which  the  first  act  was  laid,  the 
audience  saw  them — restless,  headstrong,  fight- 
ing. A  stupid  immigrant  girl  explained,  in  her 
lunk-headed,  ingenuous  way,  how  she  got 
where  she  was — tricked  by  almost  the  first 
man  she  met  when  she  arrived,  alone,  in  this 
country.  Another  made  it  clear  why  a  girl 
of  the  streets  would  even  stick  to  the  man 
who  drove  her  there  and  took  her  money. 
At  least  he  was  a  man,  and  hers—  "  somebody 
to  come  home  to." 

The  husband's  case,  also,  was  put  fairly  and 
even  eloquently.  To  his  final  outburst  that  his 
wife  and  he  might  as  well  face  the  facts— 
they  were  different  creatures  altogether,  and 
a  woman  could  not  understand  the  strength 
of  instincts  that  had  mastered  him — the  wife 
answered  that  they  were  not,  in  that  sense, 
different,  and  that  if  she  and  generations  of 
women  before  her  had  not  trained  themselves 
in  self-control  she  would  now  be  as  ungov- 
erned  as  he.  The  play  throughout  was  the 
statement  of  a  conviction,  but  the  passionate 
statement  of  it,  fused  into  dramatic  action; 
the  work  of  a  woman  of  sophisticated  intelli- 
gence and  fine  feeling  who  brought  to  the  re- 

[  139  1 


Second  Nights 


volt  shared  by  most  American  women  of  her 
class  the  power  of  expression  generally  sup- 
posed to  belong  to  men. 


VII 
TEN-TWENTY-THIRTY 

-»»  ~irrr 

THE  theatres  are  closed  for  the  summer 
and  the  empty  seats  covered  with  chintz. 
Gone  from  one's  morning  paper  are  first- 
night  reviews,  gone  the  lines  of  automobiles 
in  the  cross  streets  at  night;  audience  and 
critics  have  been  turned  out  to  grass.  Every- 
body, in  short,  being  out  of  town  and  the 
theatrical  season  quite  over,  I  suddenly  find 
myself,  with  various  thousands  of  other  non- 
existent persons,  going  busily  to  the  theatre. 
There  are  plenty  of  us;  we  comfortably 
fill  two  of  the  largest  theatres  in  town— the 
old  Academy  of  Music  and  the  old  Grand 
Opera  House — for  two  performances  every 
day.  In  the  last  few  weeks  we  have  seen  "The 
Great  Divide,"  "Zaza,"  "Trilby,"  "The  Man 
of  the  Hour,"  "The  Count  of  Monte  Cristo," 
and  "Romeo  and  Juliet."  There  is  a  new  play 
each  week  at  each  theatre,  and  some  of  them 
—Mr.  Fitch's  "The  City,"  for  instance — were 
but  yesterday  appearing  for  the  first  time  on 

[  141  ] 


Second  Nights 


Broadway.  We  see  them  decently  played — as 
well  as  by  the  average  "second"  company  on 
the  road — not  to  speak  of  moving  pictures 
and  illustrated  songs  between  the  acts,  and, 
if  it  is  Friday  afternoon,  at  Mr.  Corse  Pay- 
ton's  theatre,  pink  tea  with  the  company  on 
the  stage  after  the  show. 

There  is  a  peculiar,  even  an  esoteric,  fas- 
cination about  these  entertainments  not  re- 
siding entirely  in  the  thirty  cents  one  pays 
for  a  matinee  orchestra  seat.  The  loftiest 
need  not  be  bored.  Nowhere,  perhaps,  can 
one  so  measure  a  play's  essential  dramatic, 
or  at  least  theatrical,  spark.  Gone  is  the  fever- 
ish charm  of  the  first  night;  gone  that  sense 
of  escape,  of  warmth  and  security,  lent  to  the 
playhouse  by  the  mere  bleakness  of  a  winter 
night.  The  author's  work  is  stripped  of  every 
factitious  help,  revealed  in  its  bare,  unillu- 
mined  bones. 

Imagine  yourself,  if  you  please,  in  the 
musty  cavern  of  the  old  Academy,  or  the 
Grand  Opera  House,  on  a  hot  July  afternoon. 
Trolley-cars  are  banging  away  outside;  the 
blue  sky  calling  one  to  the  country.  From  the 
open  balcony  doors  above,  the  hard,  disil- 


Ten-  Twenty-  Thirty 


lusioning  sunlight  comes  streaming  in.  You 
can  hear  the  sparrows  twittering  up  there. 
All  about  is  an  audience,  quaintly  remote 
from  those  before  whom  the  play  was  orig- 
inally tried — fat  women  in  wilted  shirt-waists ; 
flippant  girls  chewing  gum;  boys  and  men 
who,  one  vaguely  feels,  ought  to  be  at  work 
somewhere.  Boys  drone  up  and  down  the 
aisles— "Fresh  candies,  chocolates,"  and  so 
on.  An  odor  of  spearmint  floats  in  an  atmos- 
phere already  redolent  of  talcum  powder  and 
stale  perfume. 

The  sunshine,  falling  from  a  balcony  win- 
dow, strikes  the  back  hair  of  the  woman  in 
front  of  you  and  reveals,  scantily  enmeshed 
therein,  an  unmatching  and  unmatchable 
"rat."  The  lady  on  her  right,  lifting  an  arm 
in  friendly  fashion,  adjusts  the  side  nearest 
her.  The  lady  on  the  left,  from  her  side,  offers 
a  similar  friendly  service.  Neither  succeeds, 
and  finally  all  three  dismiss  the  matter  as 
unimportant — it's  only  a  bargain  matinee— 
we're  all  friends — what's  the  difference,  any- 
how? The  orchestra  saws  off  its  overture, 
up-stairs  an  usher  tardily  shuts  the  fire-escape 
doors  and  removes  most 'of  the  sunlight.  You 


Second  Nights 


fold  up  your  afternoon  paper,  and,  with  a 
mind  full  of  Mexican  news,  view  the  rising 
curtain. 

Into  this  hostile,  or  at  least  inert  and 
wholly  indifferent,  atmosphere,  at  the  hands 
of  players  whose  skill  or  awkwardness  will 
receive  no  word  of  praise  or  blame  in  to- 
morrow's papers,  who  played  Shakespeare 
last  week  perhaps  and  will  play  Mrs.  Elinor 
Glyn  next,  as  part  of  the  day's  hard  work,  is 
projected  a  fabric  of  dramatic  art  about 
which  the  whole  town  was  talking  six  months 
or  perhaps  a  generation  ago.  Critics  have 
sifted  it,  actors  and  author  had  their  moment 
of  fame ;  thousands  of  people  (gone  now,  good- 
ness knows  where)  have  laughed  and  cried 
over  it,  been  lifted  out  of  themselves,  to  go 
home  and  think  about  it  for  days;  and  here  it 
is  coming  over  the  footlights  into  the  banal 
peppermint-scented  twilight  of  the  summer 
afternoon. 

It  is  a  terrific  strain  to  put  a  play  to — a 
strain  which  breaks  down  everything  except 
that  built  to  breathe  the  special  and  peculiar 
atmosphere  of  the  theatre.  Even  though  the 
matter  be  absurd,  it  must  at  least  be  to  the 

[  144  ] 


Ten-  Twenty-  Thirty 


manner  born.  No  atmospheric  stage-manager 
here  to  beguile  the  drifting  eye;  no  fondly  ap- 
plauded "star."  There  must  be  a  "situation," 
or  what  appears  to  be  one;  two  wills  clashing 
together;  words  that  lead  and  parry,  words 
with  a  "punch"  behind  them,  if  they  are  to 
get  across.  I  have  wondered  if  a  course  at  the 
ten-twenty-thirty  plays  might  not  be  an  ex- 
cellent experience  for  young  playwrights  bet- 
ter acquainted  with  literature  than  with  the 
special  needs  of  the  theatre. 

Listen,  for  instance,  in  "The  Man  of  the 
Hour,"  to  the  young  reform  mayor  and  the 
boss  who  nominated  him  and  thought  that 
he  could  control  him.  The  independent  young 
man  is  busy  in  his  office.  The  boss  comes 
shouldering  in. 

"I  understand  Phelan's  been  to  see  you," 
he  growls,  referring  to  the  rival  boss.  "What 
for?" 

"Business." 

"Whose  business?" 

"My  business!"  and  the  young  man  goes 
on  with  his  writing. 

Dialogue  with  bounce  to  it — "actor-proof," 
as  they  say.  An  important  franchise  is  under 

1 145  ] 


Second  Nights 


consideration.  The  mayor  intends  to  veto  it. 
The  boss  intends  to  jam  it  through.  He  shows 
that  persons  friendly  to  the  young  man  are 
behind  the  bill. 

'That's  no  news,"  mutters  the  mayor. 

"Well,  then,"  bellows  the  boss,  "maybe 
this  is!" 

The  fortune  of  the  girl  to  whom  the  mayor 
is  engaged,  and  of  her  brother,  is  invested  in 
stock  which  may  go  to  smash  if  the  bill  is 
vetoed.  The  young  man  starts  back  aghast. 

"Now  veto  it  if  you  will  and  be  damned  to 
you!"  thunders  the  boss.  The  young  mayor 
seizes  his  pen  and  writes. 

"What  have  you  done?"  sneers  the  boss. 
"Did  you  veto  it?" 

"I  vetoed  it.  And  be  damned  to  you!" 
cries  the  young  mayor,  and  down  goes  the 
curtain. 

If  the  value  of  robustness  and  resilience 
stands  out  more  clearly  in  an  unelaborate  per- 
formance of  this  sort,  so,  too,  do  tricks  and 
artifices.  Observe  the  gray-haired  old  door- 
keeper toddle  in  and  disclose  the  fact  that  he 
served  in  the  Civil  War  under  the  young 
mayor's  father. 


Ten-  Twenty-  Thirty 


"  So  you  served  under  my  father,"  says  the 
young  man.  "Do  you  remember  him?"  Ah— 
it  is  coming!  "As  if  it  were  yesterday," 
quavers  the  dear  old  doorkeeper.  Slow  music 
begins,  and  it  doesn't  take  a  clairvoyant  to 
know  that  handkerchiefs  will  be  out  in  a 
minute,  the  young  mayor  even  more  popular 
with  the  audience  than  he  is  now,  and  that  no 
matter  what  the  gentleman  who  plays  the 
doorkeeper  may  do,  he  will  bow  himself  re- 
spectfully out,  convincing  ninety  people  in 
every  hundred  in  front  that  he  is  a  magnificent 
character  actor. 

The  mechanical  precision  with  which  an 
audience  reacts — here,  whenever  the  hero 
strikes  an  attitude  and  roars — would  be  con- 
tinually astonishing  did  one  not  recall  that 
people  go  to  the  theatre  not  only  to  be 
charmed  and  to  forget,  but  to  play  a  familiar 
game  according  to  certain  conventional  rules. 
They  are  like  people  listening  to  an  after- 
dinner  speaker.  When  the  latter,  bowing  and 
smiling,  describes  his  delight  at  addressing  so 
handsome,  so  cultured,  so  brilliant  an  audi- 
ence, nobody  is  deceived  into  thinking  that  he 
is  any  more  dazzling  than  before,  but  he 

[147] 


Second  Nights 


promptly  applauds  wildly  and  cries,  "Yay- 
yay-yay!"  because  that  is  what  he  is  sup- 
posed to  do.  That  is  what  is  done.  And  people 
get  an  amusement  out  of  such  things. 

Some  such  partnership  on  the  part  of  the 
audience  must  assist  in  preserving  such  relics 
as  the  familiar  world-is-mine  scene  in  "The 
Count  of  Monte  Cristo."  You  will  recall  the 
underground  dungeon,  through  whose  momen- 
tarily transparent  walls  we  see  Edmond  Dantes 
and  the  Abbe  Faria,  prisoners  both  for  eight- 
een long  years,  with  long  white  manes  and 
white  beards  down  to  their  waists. 

Tunnelling  to  escape,  they  overhear  the 
sentry  talking  overhead  and  realize  that  their 
plot  is  discovered.  It  is  too  much  for  the  old 
Abbe,  and,  feeling  that  he  is  about  to  expire, 
he  confides  to  Edmond  the  secret  of  the  buried 
treasure  and  the  entirely  impossible  scheme 
of  escape  that  follows.  It  is  the  custom  to 
dispose  of  those  who  die  in  this  prison  by 
tying  them  up  in  sacks,  fastening  a  rock  to 
their  feet,  and  casting  them  into  the  sea. 
After  the  Abbe  is  dead,  Edmond  shall  drag 
the  body  into  his  own  cell,  take  the  Abbe's 
place,  and  let  himself  be  sunk  in  the  ocean. 

[  148  ] 


Ten-  Twenty-  Thirty 


Once  there,  he  will  cut  his  way  out  with  a 
knife  the  Abbe  has  kept  conveniently  hid, 
and  swim  away.  And,  although  melodramatic 
conventions  demand  that  the  poor  old  pris- 
oners be  represented  as  so  frail  and  doddering 
that  they  can  scarce  drag  themselves  about 
their  dungeon,  and  the  feat  is  one  which  only 
an  acrobat  in  the  pink  of  condition  would 
think  of  attempting,  you  have  but  to  turn 
down  the  lights,  turn  on  the  thunder  and 
lightning,  shake  up  the  canvas  waves,  and  have 
Dantes,  restored  by  his  salt-water  dip  to  a 
robust  leading  man,  climb  up  on  his  rock 
and  bellow,  "The  world  is  mine!"  to  explode 
the  whole  house  in  a  torrent  of  genuine  ap- 
plause. 

Where  mere  dynamics  are  so  important, 
finer  things  are  naturally  lost  or  not  at- 
tempted. By  finer,  of  course,  one  means  those 
requiring  a  certain  intellectual  sophistication 
both  for  purposes  of  interpretation  and  of 
understanding.  You  can  play  "Romeo  and 
Juliet"  to  a  ten-twenty-thirty  audience  be- 
cause its  story  has  been  lived  by  every  one 
of  them,  according  to  his  or  her  own  experi- 
ence, and  it  is  the  one  thing  in  which  most  of 

[  H9  1 


Second  Nights 


them  are  probably  most  keenly  interested. 
And,  indeed,  I  have  seen  a  Romeo  at  the 
Academy  of  Music  whose  performance  was 
truer  to  Elizabethan  feeling  and,  to  me,  more 
entertaining  than  the  pale  and  drooping  stagi- 
ness  of  the  more  scholarly  Mr.  Sothern. 

This  Romeo  was  a  trifle  smiley  and  sac- 
charine, perhaps,  but  he  fairly  exuded  youth- 
ful warmth  and  good  feeling.  He  would  put 
his  hands  on  his  friends'  shoulders  when 
Mercutio  and  Benvolio  urged  him,  "Nay, 
gentle  Romeo,  we  must  have  you  dance,"  and, 
laughing,  say,  "Not  I,  believe  me;  you  have 
dancing  shoes  with  nimble  soles:  I  have  a 
soul  of  lead,  so  stakes  me  to  the  ground  I  can- 
not move!"  —and  do  this  with  a  jolly,  grace- 
ful languor,  proud  of  himself  and  a  little 
amused  at  himself. 

Between  the  acts  I  asked  one  of  the  ushers 
who  it  was  who  was  playing  Romeo,  as  I  saw 
it  was  not  the  regular  leading  man,  whose 
name  was  on  the  programme. 

"Who?"  he  demanded.  "Why,  that's  the 
only  man  within  two  hundred  miles  of  New 
York  who  can  play  Romeo  or  Hamlet  or  any- 
thing else  at  twenty-four  hours'  notice.  That's 

[  150] 


Ten-  Twenty-  Thirty 


James  Young,  and  he's  what  his  name  im- 
plies." 

:<You  mean  he  is  young?"  I  said.  "Well," 
said  the  usher,  "he's  only  got  two  or  three 
gray  hairs  in  his  head  at  that.  And,  believe 
me,  he's  some  actor!" 

You  can  play  Shakespeare,  but  not  so 
easily  Mr.  J.  M.  Barrie  (although  Corse  Pay- 
ton  announces  "Peter  Pan");  and  still  less 
easily,  I  should  say,  intellectual  farce,  or 
Maeterlinck,  or  the  comedy  of  manners  in 
which  so  much  depends  on  finely  finished  little 
things.  You  get  the  melodrama  of  Ruth  Jor- 
dan's capture  in  the  first  act  of  "The  Great 
Divide,"  for  instance,  but  the  exaltation  into 
which  the  new  country  had  lifted  the  prim 
New  Englander,  the  vivid  desire  for  life  which 
was,  in  a  way,  a  sort  of  subconscious  urging 
of  her  action,  is  scarcely  brought  out. 

Generally  speaking,  of  course,  the  leading 
lady  doesn't  want  to  waste  her  strength  on 
that  sort  of  thing.  She  has  a  delightfully 
"cagey"  way  of  playing  in  a  sort  of  emotional 
undertone  until  the  curtain,  or  some  other 
necessary  climax,  pulls  out  all  the  stops.  And 
little  wonder.  She  gets  up  every  morning  at 


Second  Nights 


eight  o'clock,  we  will  say,  as  regularly  as  any 
office  slave.  At  ten  she  is  in  the  theatre  re- 
hearsing next  week's  play.  Out  for  a  bite  of 
lunch,  or  perhaps  a  sandwich  in  her  dressing- 
room,  and  then  the  matinee  begins.  Then,  on 
Fridays,  if  it  is  in  the  Payton  theatres,  she 
must  jump  out  of  her  costume  directly  the 
last  curtain  falls  and  into  street  clothes,  and, 
by  the  time  the  simple-minded  herd  out  in 
front  have  climbed  on  the  stage,  be  standing 
behind  a  refreshment  table  dispensing  lady's- 
fingers  and  pink  lemonade.  Then  dinner  and 
the  evening  performance.  Lines,  lines,  lines 
to  be  learned,  and  a  working-day  that  lasts 
from  ten  in  the  morning  until  eleven  at  night. 
The  orchestra  plays  a  few  bars  from  a  pop- 
ular waltz  when  she  enters  for  the  first  time. 
She  is  always  greeted  by  applause  then,  and 
often  at  each  entrance,  and  the  audience  thor- 
oughly approve  everything  she  does.  Perhaps 
it  is  because  of  this  that  she  plays  with  an  air 
of  almost  conscious  virtue  and  benevolence, 
as  if  the  rest  of  the  cast  were  creatures  of  a 
lower  world  and  only  she  and  the  audience 
really  understood.  She  almost  always  has  a 
contralto  voice,  which,  when  she  wants  to, 

[ 


Ten-  Twenty-  Thirty 


she  can  drop  to  delightfully  thrilling  and  the- 
atrical depths. 

Your  appetite  becomes  so  whetted  by  her 
stand-offishness  that  you  are  ravished  with 
delight  when  these  moments  come.  I  recall 
Miss  Minna  Phillips  in  the  "Count  of  Monte 
Cristo."  She  was  playing  Mercedes,  who  mar- 
ried the  wicked  Fernand  after  Edmond,  her 
sailor  lover,  went  to  prison.  How  sad  and  beau- 
tiful she  looked  in  her  white  wig  after  those 
eighteen  years  of  cruel  separation!  "I  will 
kill  him!"  hissed  Edmond,  referring  to  the 
sprightly  young  Albert,  now  nearly  eighteen. 
"No,  you  will  not,"  said  Madame  Fernand, 
and  from  the  drop  of  her  voice  we  knew  that 
something  was  coming.  "You  will  not  even 
fight  him.  Because—  "And  why ? "  demanded 
Edmond.  "Because 

he 
is 
your 

son!" 

It  was  just  after  the  pink  tea  and  "Trilby" 
were  over,  and  before  she  dashed  out  to  get  a 
little  dinner  and  return  for  the  evening's  per- 
formance, that  I  managed  to  lasso  Miss  Phil- 

1 153  ] 


Second  Nights 


lips  for  a  moment's  talk.  They  still  have  a  sort 
of  greenroom  in  the  old  Grand  Opera  House, 
and  we  sat  there.  Miss  Phillips  wore  a  dashing 
white  tailored  hat,  she  looked  very  healthy 
and  cheerful,  and  I  was  impressed  by  the  fact 
that  she  was  many  times  more  bright  and  ani- 
mated off  than  on  the  stage. 

Yes,  she  admitted  briskly,  it  certainly  was  a 
busy  life,  but  she  liked  it.  Better  than  the  road 
and  better  than  free-lancing,  so  to  speak,  on 
Broadway.  Perhaps  I  knew  that  she  came  from 
Australia  and  had  been  featured  in  several 
road  productions  before  joining  the  stock  com- 
pany four  years  ago.  She  could  make  more 
money  in  stock  than  she  could  out  of  it.  It 
wasn't  so  bad  when  you  got  into  the  routine ; 
and  the  great  thing,  of  course,  was  being  in 
New  York  all  the  year  round,  practically,  and 
having  a  home. 

Of  course,  one  thing  that  helped  her  was 
that  she  was  such  a  good  "study."  She  could 
pick  up  a  role  in  no  time.  They  got  along  beau- 
tifully together — like  a  happy  family.  Good- 
ness gracious!  Wouldn't  they  have  to!  Twelve 
performances  a  week  and  morning  rehearsals. 
If  they  didn't  get  along  they'd  scratch  out 

1 154] 


Ten-  Twenty-  Thirty 


each  other's  eyes.  And  no  sweethearting,  either 
—everybody  minded  his  own  business.  Of 
course,  you  didn't  have  a  hard  role  every  week. 
Last  week  she  was  playing  "Zaza"  and  this 
week  "Trilby,"  and  there  was  plenty  to  do  in 
both  of  them.  But  next  week,  in  the  "Count  of 
Monte  Cristo"  she  would  almost  have  a  rest. 
As  I  said  good-by  to  the  leading  lady  I  found 
myself  shaking  hands  with  Mr.  Joseph  W. 
Girard,  the  company's  "heavy."  Mr.  Girard  is 
a  tall,  well-built  gentleman  with  a  pleasant 
expression  and  a  fighting  jaw.  You  would  take 
him  on  the  street  for  a  successful  cattleman  or 
contractor  rather  than  an  actor.  No  turned- 
back  cuffs  or  amethyst  sleeve-links  or  hand- 
kerchief up  his  sleeve  for  Mr.  Girard.  No  pink 
teas,  either.  "Not  for  me,"  he  said  grimly. 
Mr.  Girard  had  just  taken  off  the  long  Dun- 
drearys which  Taffy  wears  in  "Trilby" —he 
was  one  of  the  "Troys  anglayzes,"  as  they  were 
called  in  a  French  which  added  still  another 
variety  to  the  three  kinds  generally  supposed 
to  be  extant — French,  American,  and  West 
Point.  I  had  seen  Mr.  Girard  as  the  decadent 
old  Duke  de  Brissac  in  "Zaza,"  as  the  villain 
in  "The  Still  Alarm,"  and  later  I  encountered 

t 


Second  Nights 


him  again  as  the  bare-throated  sailor,  Dan- 
glars,  in  "The  Count  of  Monte  Cristo"  and  as 
the  wicked  King  of  Sardalia  in  "Three 
Weeks,"  with  a  Russian  beard,  medals,  a  red 
nose,  and  high,  shiny  boots.  One  of  the  fasci- 
nations of  stock-company  acting  is  the  chance 
it  gives  you  to  follow  your  friends  through  all 
sorts  of  character  changes. 

I  asked  Mr.  Girard  how  many  roles  he  knew. 
He  smiled  deprecatingly  down  at  his  cigar. 
"Oh,  I  don't  know,"  he  said;  "maybe  about 
a  hundred."  Somebody  here  reminded  the 
"heavy"  of  the  time  he  was  on  the  road  with 
a  company  that  had  a  repertory  of  eighteen 
plays.  "Yes,"  assented  Mr.  Girard.  "Put  any 
of  'em  on  at  a  day's  notice.  They'd  go  ahead 
and  bill  us,  and  we'd  give  'em  whatever  they 
liked."  The  "heavy"  preferred  stock  too.  He 
liked  having  a  home,  and  as  for  hard  work— 
"Why,  look  at  those  poor  girls  in  burlesque 
shows.  Two  shows  a  day,  and  that  is  hard 
work." 

Letting  people  choose  their  own  plays  is 
one  of  the  devices  of  the  ten-twenty-thirty 
houses.  At  the  Academy  of  Music,  where  a 
stock  company  has  been  playing  steadily  since 

!  156  ] 


Ten-  Twenty-  Thirty 


last  August,  they  send  out  some  eight  thou- 
sand circulars  a  week,  merely  to  give  their 
patrons  a  general  notion  of  the  next  week's 
play.  Often  the  audience  chooses  the  plays 
to  be  put  on,  and  subscribers  have  the  same 
seats  for  one  evening  a  week  throughout  the 
winter. 

Mr.  Girard  told  how  the  spectators  in 
Brooklyn  nodded  to  each  other  as  they  took 
their  seats,  and  how  you  soon  got  to  re- 
member the  faces  out  in  front.  And  you 
couldn't  fool  the  audience  about  the  people  on 
the  stage.  Send  one  of  their  favorites  on  in  a 
pitch-dark  scene  as  a  detective  or  a  burglar, 
and  they'd  recognize  him,  no  matter  what  his 
disguise,  and  give  him  a  hand.  He  didn't  think 
much  of  "Trilby"  for  their  sort  of  people. 
Too  much  Svengali,  hypnotism,  and  evil-eye 
business.  It  got  on  the  women's  nerves—  "all 
right  for  Broadway,  maybe,  but  not  for  a  fam- 
ily theatre." 

Mr.  Corse  Payton  has  done  more  than  any 
one  else,  probably,  to  make  the  ten-twenty- 
and-thirty  cent  theatre  a  family  institution. 
He  has  been  at  it  ten  years  now,  and  has  four 
companies  and  something  like  a  hundred  play- 

[  157] 


Second  Nights 


ers  working  for  him.  A  Friday  matinee  such  as 
I  have  mentioned  is  a  veritable  orgy  of  the 
sort  of  thing  that  such  an  audience  genuinely 
likes.  The  pink  tea  is  one  of  Mr.  Payton's  great 
ideas.  A  big  sign  in  the  lobby  announces  it  as 
the  crowd  comes  in.  Corse  himself  issues  an- 
other invitation  from  the  stage  just  before  the 
last  act,  and  as  soon  as  the  curtain  falls  the 
crowd  pile  up  on  the  stage  by  way  of  the  left- 
hand  boxes — fat  ladies  in  shirt-waists,  pound- 
ing the  scenery  to  see  how  real  it  is;  giggling 
young  girls,  half  awed,  half  contemptuous,  in 
this  behind-the-scenes  world.  The  flip  young 
ushers,  returned  to  their  street  clothes,  keep 
the  crowd  moving  past  the  refreshment-table 
and  toward  the  stage  door,  murmuring,  sotto 
voce,  witticisms  like  "Come  an'  shake  hands 
with  your  favorite  actor,"  or  "No,  I  don't  like 
to  eat  watermelons — they  get  your  ears  so 
wet." 

Then  there  is  an  orchestra,  and  between  the 
acts  moving  pictures,  if  you  are  at  the  Acad- 
emy; if  at  the  Grand  Opera  House,  a  versatile 
young  man,  who  shifts  scenery  or  something  at 
other  times,  comes  out  in  front  of  the  curtain 
and  sings  an  illustrated  song.  There  is  a  picture 

[  158] 


Ten-  Twenty-  Thirty 


on  the  screen  of  a  girl  in  a  pink  dress  in  a  gar- 
den, and  the  athletic  young  tenor  cries: 

"Let's  make  love  among  the  roses,  dearie, 

You  and  I, 

Stealing  little  hugs  and  tender  kisses 
On  the  sly." 

After  the  chorus  has  been  sung  once  or  twice 
the  words  themselves  are  flashed  on  the  cur- 
tain. The  vague  hum  that  has  followed  the 
song  comes  out  more  confidently  on  the  spear- 
mint-scented air — there  is  a  sort  of  pathos  in 
the  sibilant  s's  in  the  twilight — and  following 
the  one  man's  voice  are  many  feminine  voices, 
a  little  off  the  key,  perhaps,  faltering,  yet  evi- 
dently in  deadly  earnest  groping  for  the  tune. 
With  some  difficulty  I  cornered  the  restless 
Mr.  Payton  in  his  private  office  and  tried  to 
engage  him  in  talk.  He  is  a  tallish,  slender 
man,  of  forty-two  perhaps,  with  the  look  of 
feeling  very  chipper  in  spite  of  having  been 
out  late  the  night  before.  "If  Mr.  Payton 
would  open  up,"  said  his  young  business 
manager,  gazing  up  at  his  chief  with  kindling 
eyes,  "he  could  give  you  some  great  stuff." 
Mr.  Payton,  however,  was  difficult  to  open 

1 159 1 


Second  Nights 


up.  His  is  the  touch-and-go  manner  of  speech 
—a  "line"  here  and  then  off  before  the  laugh 
comes.  It  is  all  right  for  an  audience,  but  not 
adapted  to  close  quarters. 

He  was  born— "Now,  don't  laugh"— in 
Centerville,  Iowa.  Coming  down  with  a  sort 
of  stage-fever,  he  started  out  with  a  circus, 
then  organized  a  stock  company  and  played 
his  own  neighborhood. 

"See  that?"  Mr.  Payton  pointed  to  a 
framed  photograph  of  an  ingenuous-looking 
youth  in  a  long  coat  and  top-hat,  reminding 
one  slightly  of  a  coachman.  "What  do  you 
know  about  that  ?  I  suppose  that  was  my  idea 
of  looking  like  an  actor." 

The  company  succeeded,  came  east  about  a 
a  dozen  years  ago  and  started  in  Brooklyn. 
Presently  Mr.  Payton  purchased  a  theatre 
there  and  opened  with  "The  Girl  I  Left 
Behind  Me."  They  played  forty-one  weeks 
that  year— "Aristocracy,"  "East  Lynne," 
"Jim  the  Penman,"  "The  Two  Orphans," 
"The  Octoroon,"  "Camille,"  "Romeo  and 
Juliet,"  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  and  "The 
Little  Minister"  among  their  varied  repertory. 

"Look  at  this!"  suddenly  volunteered  Mr. 
[  160] 


Ten-  Twenty-  Thirty 


Payton,  pointing  to  another  framed  photo- 
graph, this  time  of  a  curiously  antique-looking 
automobile.  On  the  front  seat,  at  the  almost 
vertical  steering-wheel,  unmistakably  sat  Mr. 
Payton  himself — ten  years  younger,  more 
innocent-looking,  with  curly  hair  that  stuck 
out  from  underneath  his  hat. 

"Yes,"  he  admitted,  "that's  how  I  looked 
then.  First  automobile.  Ought  to  have  seen  the 
horses  run  when  I  came  down  the  street!  Now 
they'll  come  up  and  lick  the  gasoline  off." 

Times  have  changed,  indeed.  There  are  four 
Corse  Payton  companies  now,  playing  in  the 
neighborhood  of  New  York.  Every  morning  in 
the  lobby  of  the  Grand  Opera  House,  there  is 
a  line  of  actors  waiting,  looking  for  a  job.  Mr. 
Payton  himself  used  to  act,  but  he  rarely  does 
so  now  except  in  his  little  monologues  before 
the  curtain.  Of  course,  he  can't  be  in  four 
places  at  once,  but  he  manages  to  look  in  at 
each  of  his  theatres  every  now  and  then  to  tell 
the  audience  how  things  are  going. 

He  suddenly  shoots  out  in  front  of  the  cur- 
tain just  before  the  last  act,  with  a  "Hello,  au- 
dience!" and,  swinging  his  arms,  walks  rap- 
idly up  and  down  the  footlights,  talking  as  he 

[  161  ] 


Second  Nights 


goes.  Now  and  then  he  stops,  whacks  his  head, 
or,  elaborately  twisting  one  hand  round  with 
the  other,  slaps  his  wrist,  and  continues  his 
promenade. 

"Next  week  we'll  revive  that  grand  old 
melodrama,  'The  Count  of  Monte  Cristo.' 
Splendid  play — brings  out  the  full  strength  of 
the  company.  After  that,  Mrs.  Elinor  Glyn's 
'Three  Weeks.'  Beautiful  scenic  effects — good 
show — don't  miss  it.  Prices  same  as  usual- 
ten,  twenty,  and  thirty  cents.  Dollar  twenty  a 
dozen.  Ten  cents  admission — ten  cents  for 
4 Three  Weeks.'  Cheaper  than  room  rent." 
The  audience  adore  it.  They  wish  he  would  go 
on  forever.  "If  there's  anything  you'd  like,  let 
us  know.  List  of  plays  out  in  the  lobby — a 
hundred  of  'em.  Pick  out  the  one  you  like  best 
and  tell  us  about  it.  That's  what  we're  here 
for.  Pretty  soon  we're  going  to  put  on  a  revival 
of  the  greatest  melodrama  ever  written,  'The 
Two  Orphans.'  Prices  same  as  usual.  Ten  cents 
admission — five  cents  an  orphan  [slap].  And 
if  there's  any  play  you  want,  just  vote  for  it. 
We'll  play  it.  We  play  anything  from  '  Hamlet ' 
to  polo.  Good-by,  people!"  —and  off  he  goes, 
swinging  his  arms— "I'll  come  back!" 

1 162  ] 


Ten-  Twenty-  Thirty 


Anything  from  "Hamlet"  to  polo — with 
moving  pictures  and  pink  lemonade  and  the 
glad  news  from  the  curtain  advertisements 
that  somebody's  gum  aids  digestion  and  that 
your  credit  is  good  at  Spink's.  Of  course,  the 
ingenue  is  rather  too  giggly,  and  the  juvenile, 
in  wiping  out  the  lines  of  care,  doth  so  incar- 
nadine his  face  that  his  eyes  are  but  two  black 
spots,  like  the  lumps  of  coal  in  a  snow-man. 
The  comic  aunt  overdoes  her  make-up  by 
hanging  a  green  parrot  on  the  very  rim  of  her 
bonnet,  so  that  it  flops  up  and  down  absurdly 
every  time  she  moves  her  head.  There  are  all 
sorts  of  exaggerations,  overaccents,  a  contin- 
uous scaling  down.  You  see  the  author's  work 
through  a  glass  darkly,  perhaps.  But  you  do 
see.  For  thirty  cents  (fifty  in  the  evening)  you 
see  plays  of  established  merit,  while  Broadway 
is  paying  two  dollars  to  see  plays  tried  out. 

July,  1911. 


VIII 

MR.  WALTER  AND    THE 
"NO   QUARTER"   SCHOOL 


aa. 


IF  a  man  sells  groceries  or  makes  boxes  all 
day  he  may  reasonably  ask  that  the  play- 
wright, who  doesn't,  shall,  when  evening 
comes,  show  the  box-making,  grocery-selling 
existence  in  a  new  light.  He  may  demand  that 
he  throw  astonishing  and  delightful  search- 
light beams  not  only  on  but  clear  through  the 
boxes  and  tin  cans,  so  that  the  outside  labels 
are  forgotten  and  any  one  can  see  honest  work, 
faithfulness,  fun,  good  citizenship,  and  all  sorts 
of  unexpected  qualities  within.  The  author 
should  be  able  to  toss  them  up  in  the  air  and 
juggle  them  about  in  amusing  and  unexpected 
ways,  so  that  the  eye  is  distracted,  if  nothing 
more.  When,  however,  the  box  maker  goes  to 
the  play  and  sees,  as  it  were,  only  another  man 
exactly  like  himself  laboriously  pounding  the 
same  old  boxes  together  —  when  he  is  neither 
surprised  nor  enlightened  —  he  naturally  feels 
that  the  playwright  has  given  him  nothing. 

[  164  1 


Mr.  Walter  and  the  "No  Quarter"  School 

This  is  the  trouble  with  many  of  our  plays 
about  "graft,"  political  bosses,  district  at- 
torneys, and  so  on.  The  author  has  nothing 
to  say  which  has  not  been  better  said  in  edi- 
torials and  sermons.  There  is  no  reason  for 
spending  money  and  an  evening  to  hear 
him. 

There  are  writers,  of  course,  like  the  French- 
man, Brieux,  who  disdain  theatrical  artifice 
and  use  the  theatre  exactly  as  a  stump-speaker 
uses  a  cart-tail — to  harangue  the  crowd.  Such 
a  play  as  "Damaged  Goods"  was  scarcely 
more  than  a  physician's  pamphlet  read  aloud 
to  the  audience.  It  was  not  written  to  give 
people  a  "good  time,"  but  to  break  their  "con- 
spiracy of  silence,"  force  them  to  think  and 
talk  about  a  public  danger  of  which  nothing 
generally  is  said.  Mr.  Brieux  had  something 
important  to  say,  and  one  might  think  that 
"Damaged  Goods"  was  no  more  a  play  than 
an  editorial  in  The  Breeder's  Gazette  and  yet 
that  its  author  had  done  work  which  deserved 
a  hearing  in  the  theatre. 

Our  stage  has  long  since  ceased  to  be  a 
mere  grotto  of  limelit  enchantment  for  tak- 
ing tired  people  to  the  islands  of  the  blest. 

[  165  ] 


Second  Nights 


It  is  closer  to  life  than  it  used  to  be,  people 
turn  to  it  more  naturally,  and  things  that  are 
in  the  air  can  no  more  be  kept  off  it — in  spite 
of  their  imperfect  form — than  they  can  be 
kept  out  of  the  newspapers  and  magazines.  In 
the  case  of  a  play-writer,  on  fire  with  indigna- 
tion or  protest,  and  frankly  a  pamphleteer, 
mere  matters  of  stage  technic,  or  the  inci- 
dental behavior  of  characters  apart  from  the 
argument  they  make,  are  of  small  concern.  It 
is  his  information  or  advice  we  are  interested 
in,  and,  if  this  is  worth  hearing,  on  other 
matters  we  can  let  him  down  rather  easily. 
When,  on  the  other  hand,  the  author  presents 
not  a  tract  but  a  piece  of  fiction,  and  at 
the  same  time  pretends  that  it  is  true  to 
life;  when  he  uses  all  his  artifice  to  move  us 
and  even  to  make  us  miserable,  and  then 
says,  in  effect,  "Don't  blame  me.  I'm  a 
relentless  realist.  Blame  the  facts,"  we  are 
justified  in  holding  him  pretty  strictly  to  ac- 
count. 

Mr.  Eugene  Walter  is  a  fair  target  for  such 
questioning.  He  is,  perhaps,  as  good  an  ex- 
ample as  we  have  of  what  might  be  called  the 
"No  quarter!"  school,  and  shows  his  unhappy 
[  166] 


Mr.  Walter  and  the  "No  Quarter"  School 

characters — the  selfish  clerk  in  "  Paid  in  Full," 
the  actress  in  "The  Easiest  Way,"  the  extrava- 
gant wife  in  "  Fine  Feathers" — no  mercy  what- 
soever. These  plays  must  have  made  many 
thousands  miserable,  for  they  were  unusually 
successful,  and  this  unhappiness  was  sharp- 
ened by  the  fact  that  the  spectator  could  not 
dismiss  the  story  on  the  stage  as  "play,"  but 
must  needs  accept  it  as  a  cross-section  of 
actual  existence  lifted  out  warm,  palpitating, 
etc.,  etc.,  as  the  critics  say,  from  every-day 
life. 

Now,  Mr.  Walter's  work  has  many  admi- 
rable qualities.  It  has  force,  a  certain  photo- 
graphic accuracy,  and  its  author's  thorough- 
going willingness,  not  to  say  determination,  to 
be  "unpleasant,"  is,  in  itself,  rare  enough  to 
be  refreshing.  People  pricked  up  their  ears 
when  his  rasping  voice  was  first  heard  in 
"Paid  in  Full,"  and  he  took  his  audience  up 
to  a  four-room  Harlem  flat,  slid  back  the 
dining-room  partition,  and  let  them  look  in. 

Now,  a  four-room  Harlem  flat,  even  on 
eighteen  dollars  a  week,  might  be,  in  its  way, 
the  vine-clad  cottage  of  romance  hedged 
about  by  trains  and  trolley-cars.  That  would 

[  167] 


Second  Nights 


require,  to  be  sure,  a  combination  of  cir- 
cumstances and  qualities  easier  to  imagine  in 
the  theatre  than  to  find  in  real  life,  and  Mr. 
Walter  didn't  choose  to  imagine  them  at  all. 
There  are  cads  in  four-room  flats  as  in  Bel- 
grave  Square,  and  he  preferred  to  exhibit  one 
of  these.  We  saw  Joe  Brooks  at  home  after 
a  hard,  hot  summer  day,  whining  about  not 
getting  a  "raise,"  jealous  of  other  men  in  the 
office,  yawping  about  the  tyranny  of  his  em- 
ployer and  the  world.  We  saw  him,  in  the  sec- 
ond act,  living  in  a  semifashionable  hotel  on 
money  stolen  from  the  firm.  He  had  lied  to  his 
young  wife — rested  and  happy  now — and  told 
her  that  his  salary  was  trebled.  When  expo- 
sure came,  and  there  was  no  escape  from  arrest 
next  morning,  he  demanded  that  she  go  to  his 
employer's  rooms  to  make  what  bargain  she 
could.  She  went,  not  for  any  love  of  him,  but 
because  he  declared  he  had  lied  and  stolen  for 
her  sake.  This  employer — a  hard-fisted  giant 
of  a  retired  sea-captain — lived  in  a  remarkable 
den,  with  port  and  starboard  lights  and  a  bow 
light  on  the  rear  wall.  It  was  not  a  pleasant 
place,  but  the  young  woman  faced  him.  Her 
pluck  and  defiant  purity  stirred  a  latent  chiv- 

[  168  ] 


Mr.  Walter  and  the  "No  Quarter"  School 

airy  in  the  old  ruffian's  heart,  and  he  sent  her 
home  with  a  paper  certifying  that  the  hus- 
band's accounts  had  been  examined  and  found 
correct. 

And  that  precious  young  hyena,  without 
considering  what  price  she  might  have  paid, 
grabbed  the  release  and  assumed  that  things 
were  to  go  on  as  before.  She  turned  to  go  for 
good  then — her  debt  paid  in  full— whereupon 
he  upbraided  her  with  intending  to  return  to 
the  captain.  And  the  last  sight  we  had  of  the 
hero  was  as  the  outer  door  slammed  shut  and 
he  sagged  limply  against  the  wall  staring  at 
the  wreck  of  his  life. 

There  was  no  doubt  of  the  "relentlessness" 
—indeed,  it  was  a  question  if  the  spectator's 
sympathy  was  not  too  sorely  strained.  Noble 
suffering,  courageous  sin  may  be  viewed  to 
some  purpose,  but  of  this  perfect  caddishness, 
long-drawn-out,  one  was  inclined  to  ask  the 
use.  The  "use  of  it"  —and  the  sweetly  brave 
young  wife,  her  faithful  dobbin,  "Jimsey" 
Smith,  and  the  horny-handed  sea-dog  made  the 
piece  more  likable  than  one  might  suppose— 
was  that  it  was  chock-full  of  the  life  of  thou- 
sands of  shabby  New  York  flats,  not  run  into 


Second  Nights 


a  stock  theatre  pattern  nor  prettified,  but  as 
it  might  appear  to  a  reporter  just  come  down- 
town to  his  office  from  covering  Joe  Brooks's 
case  and  setting  down  what  he  had  seen.  And 
that  doesn't  happen  in  the  theatre  every  night. 

There  was  more  relentlessness  in  Mr.  Wal- 
ter's next  success,  "The  Easiest  Way."  A 
young  actress  who  owes  her  position  on  the 
stage  to  a  rich  New  York  broker,  whose  mis- 
tress she  has  been,  meets  a  young  Westerner 
while  on  a  summer  vacation  in  the  mountains 
of  Colorado.  Both  fall  in  love.  They  are  con- 
vinced that  they  are  experiencing  something 
deeper  and  more  important  than  has  ever  come 
to  them  before,  and,  as  the  man  has  lived  a 
variegated  enough  life  himself  not  to  object 
to  the  woman's  past,  they  decide  to  marry. 

As  he  is  getting  only  thirty  dollars  a  week  as 
a  reporter  on  a  Denver  paper,  he  decides  to  go 
to  Goldfield  for  a  year  in  the  hope  of  making 
a  big  strike,  while  she  is  to  return  to  New  York 
for  another  year  on  the  stage.  Why  the  woman, 
assumed  to  be  in  a  highly  exalted  frame  of 
mind,  should  subject  herself  to  the  tempta- 
tions involved  in  this  course  instead  of  marry- 
ing her  reporter  at  once — certainly  for  a  man 

[  170  ] 


Mr.  Walter  and  the  "No  Quarter"  School 

only  twenty-six  years  old,  in  Colorado,  thirty 
dollars  a  week  is  comparatively  princely — is 
not  clear  except  that  otherwise,  as  is  so  often 
the  case,  "there  wouldn't  be  any  play." 

The  broker — an  admirably  realistic  type, 
brutally  cynical,  wholly  unmoral  in  his  deal- 
ings with  women,  yet  always  a  "good  sport" 
and  true  to  his  own  curious  code  of  square  deal- 
ing— warns  them  both.  He  points  out  that  the 
young  woman  has  lived  too  long  as  a  spoiled 
butterfly;  that  she  spends  more  for  her  cabs 
than  the  reporter  earns  in  a  week,  and  he 
finally  goes  east  with  the  understanding  that 
whenever  she  wishes  to  come  back  to  him  she 
may,  but  she  must  let  the  other  man  know. 

She  also  returns,  and  after  a  few  months' 
respectable  existence,  during  which  she  can 
get  no  work  and  no  contributions  come  from 
the  miner,  she  gives  up  the  struggle.  Unwill- 
ing, however,  to  surrender  her  "one  chance  of 
happiness,"  she  burns  the  letter  the  broker 
dictates  instead  of  sending  it  to  the  other  man. 
Then  the  miner  strikes  it  rich  and  hurries 
east.  She  fights  desperately  to  keep  her  sink- 
ing ship  afloat,  but  in  the  end  both  men  dis- 
cover her  double-dealing  and  cast  her  off. 


Second  Nights 


The  external  naturalism  of  this  unpleasant 
picture  was  complete,  and  it  was  again  re- 
freshing to  find  an  author  courageous  enough 
to  defy  the  happy  ending.  It  was  also  true 
that  no  insight  or  imagination  lifted  these 
arbitrarily  chosen  surface  facts  into  any  re- 
gion of  beauty  or  universal  truth — even  a 
truth  so  comparatively  universal  as  that  it 
is  hard  for  a  lone  girl  on  the  stage  to  be 
good. 

The  case  was  a  special,  not  a  general,  one. 
The  heroine  had  already  lost  the  fight  once 
before  the  play  began,  and  her  second  fight 
to  be  respectable  was  not,  as  the  audience  were 
asked  to  assume,  a  struggle  between  shame 
and  starvation.  It  was  between  going  back- 
open-eyed,  to  dangers  she  knew  well  enough 
— or  staying  away  from  them  and  marrying 
her  young  man,  as  a  woman  in  her  state  of 
exaltation  probably  would  have  done  had  not 
the  "relentless"  author  dragged  her  back  to 
Broadway. 

It  began  to  appear  with  this  play  that  Mr. 
Walter  was  relentless  not  so  much  in  the  pur- 
suit of  truth,  perhaps,  as  toward  his  audience 
and  the  unhappy  mortals  he  chose  to  drive 

[  172  ] 


Mr.  Walter  and  the  "No  Quarter"  School 

to  their  melancholy  ends.  "Fine  Feathers" 
strengthened  this  impression. 

The  fine  feathers  in  this  case  were  the 
pretty  things  a  selfish  young  wife  demanded 
and  for  which  her  devoted  husband  sold  his 
soul  and  eventually  wrecked  his  happiness 
and  hers. 

The  young  couple  lived  in  a  suburban 
bungalow  near  New  York,  for  which  they 
were  paying  in  monthly  instalments.  The  wife, 
a  pretty  up-State  girl,  did  her  own  housework; 
the  husband  was  chief  chemist  in  a  cement 
factory  and  got  twenty-five  dollars  a  week. 
That  a  healthy  young  woman,  without  chil- 
dren and  accustomed  to  the  simple  life  of  a 
small  town,  would  necessarily  find  the  care  of 
such  a  home  an  intolerable  burden  is  not  a 
fact,  but  it  is  true  to  the  "relentless"  view  of 
life  that  it  must  seem  so.  The  personal  idio- 
syncrasies which  would  have  had  so  much  to 
do  with  the  girl's  restlessness  are  not  brought 
out,  and  the  tragedy  is  assumed  to  follow 
from  conditions  under  which  it  was  by  no 
means  inevitable. 

Well,  here  they  were,  at  any  rate,  scrimping 
and  struggling  along,  with  the  young  wife 

[  173 1 


Second  Nights 


buying  a  new  hat  instead  of  paying  the 
butcher's  bill  and  not  daring  to  tell  her  hus- 
band she  had  been  to  the  matinee,  when  along 
came  an  old  friend,  successful  now,  with  a 
solution  of  their  troubles.  He  was  interested  in 
a  big  dam,  the  architect  for  which  had  speci- 
fied a  certain  superior  quality  of  cement. 
Ordinary  cement,  said  he,  was  quite  good 
enough,  and  if  Bob,  as  expert,  would  but  let 
the  ordinary  quality  go  through,  it  would 
save  $200,000,  $40,000  of  which  would  be  his. 

The  young  fellow  refused,  naturally.  The 
capitalist,  with  a  hearty  frankness  which  dis- 
armed less  forceful  men,  laughed  this  aside  as 
absurd.  "It's  merely  picking  up  the  loose  ends 
of  a  business  deal — and  it's  picking  up  loose 
ends  that's  made  the  American  millionaire." 
And  he  went  on  to  crush  the  young  man  with 
the  argument  that  it  isn't  work  that  makes 
money — for  the  worker;  the  only  thing  that 
makes  money  is  money,  and  unless  you  have 
some  to  turn  over  and  make  more,  you  will  be 
working  for  some  one  else  all  your  life.  And 
the  wife,  by  the  half-open  door,  overheard. 

The  spectator  did  not  admire  her  when  she 
emerged,  after  the  business  man  had  gone, 

[  174] 


Mr.  Walter  and  the  "No  Quarter"  School 

whining  that  when  she  heard  of  all  that  money 
"she  was  like  a  child  with  a  new  Christmas 
tree,  and  you  kicked  it  out  because  you  don't 
believe  in  Christmas  trees!"  And  he  was  sur- 
prised that  a  young  woman  with  the  innate 
fineness  of  feeling  she  was  supposed  to  have 
would  ever  have  made  that  bargain  with  the 
business  man,  under  which  she  was  to  do 
all  she  could  to  influence  her  husband—  "and 
you've  no  idea  what  a  sensible  woman  can  do 
with  her  husband"— and  in  return  be  "sort 
of  put  on  the  pay-roll."  Mr.  Walter  was  very 
relentless,  indeed,  with  his  nice  girl  from  up- 
State. 

The  desperate,  driven  husband  surrendered 
at  last.  "I'll  get  my  money  first  and  reform 
afterward,  like  the  rest  of  'em!"  he  cried,  and 
let  the  contract  through. 

Then  the  net  tightened.  He  took  to  drink, 
lost  money  in  speculation;  in  the  end  the 
dam  went  out  before  a  flood,  and  on  his  al- 
ready tortured  conscience  was  thrust  the  bur- 
den of  scores  of  innocent  lives.  If  he  stayed, 
there  was  prison  ahead,  not  only  for  him  and 
his  accomplice,  but,  as  accessory  before  the 
fact,  so  the  capitalist  threatened,  for  his  young 

[  175  ] 


Second  Nights 


wife.  So,  with  a  sense  of  dramatic  effect  which 
even  the  relentless  author  did  not  deny  him, 
he  went  to  the  telephone  and  in  his  wife's 
presence  very  deliberately  called  a  policeman. 

"It's  a  case  of  suicide,"  he  said,  snapped  off 
the  lights,  there  was  a  shot  in  the  darkness, 
and  to  the  pounding  on  the  door,  and  the  long 
quavering  scream  of  the  wife,  the  curtain 
slowly  fell. 

There,  undoubtedly,  was  your  "punch,"  de- 
livered straight  between  the  eyes,  or,  if  you 
prefer,  the  ears.  And  those  who  enjoy  the  sen- 
sation doubtless  enjoyed  the  play.  The  gen- 
eral idea — a  thoughtless  wife  driving  her  hus- 
band to  extravagance — was  of  more  general 
application  than  that  of  "The  Easiest  Way," 
and  it  was  again  reassuring  to  see  an  author 
willing  to  carry  out  such  a  theme  to  the  bitter 
end. 

Of  any  urbane  and  penetrating  quality, 
however,  any  distillation  of  human  nature  as 
distinguished  from  the  swift  journalistic  treat- 
ment of  certain  objective  facts,  "  Fine  Feath- 
ers" —at  least  as  played — was  as  innocent  as 
the  gong  of  a  trolley-car.  It  seemed  to  have 
grown  in  the  acrid  air  generated  by  the  con- 

1 176] 


Mr.  Walter  and  the  "No  Quarter"  School 

stant  sight  and  sound  and  feel  of  unattain- 
able wealth — by  the  belief,  because  there  is 
nothing  else  in  sight,  that  things  which  cost 
money  are  the  only  things  there  are.  The 
young  wife  was  less  true  to  common  human 
nature  than  merely  one  more  poor  creature 
who  needed  a  vacation  from  New  York.  And 
Mr.  Walter,  with  all  his  force  and  willingness 
to  be  thorough,  seemed  to  be  writing  in  the 
light  of  those  greenish-yellow  arc-lamps  which 
help  to  make  night  hideous  on  Broadway. 

The  trouble  with  many  of  the  relentless 
realists  is  that  they  are  not  relentless  enough, 
or  that  their  relentlessness  is  too  much  in  one 
direction.  You  may  not  etch  in  meanness  and 
glasses  of  real  celery  and  red  table-cloths  and 
slang,  with  a  microscope  and  a  diamond- 
pointed  dagger,  and  then  casually  twist  your 
unhappy  characters  into  whatever  fortuitous 
postures  will  make  an  effective  scene.  The 
naturalistic  writer  chooses  a  straight  and  nar- 
row path,  and,  having  chosen  it,  he  must  stick 
to  it  though  the  skies  fall.  And  when  that  is 
done  it  still  takes  something  more  than 
merely  being  disagreeable  to  be  true. 

I  remember  seeing  a  play  called  "The  Man 

[177] 


Second  Nights 


Higher  Up"  on  the  afternoon  after  I  saw 
"Fine  Feathers."  It  was  the  story  of  a  ward 
boss,  a  first-class  political  superman,  who 
thought  the  only  thing  worth  while  was  power. 
He  didn't  need  friends,  avoided  women  lest 
any  softness  interfere  with  his  strength,  and 
he  regarded  graft  and  bribery  as  a  mere  means 
to  an  end — the  end  of  ruling  the  people,  be- 
cause they  didn't  know  enough  to  rule  them- 
selves. 

This  intransigent  egoist  was  eventually 
brought  to  realize  that  there  were  other  peo- 
ple in  the  world  than  himself— that  he  was  a 
trifling  episode  in  the  main  story,  that  there 
was  a  force,  a  final  justice — a  Man  Higher  Up 
—which  must  be  reckoned  with. 

Superficially,  the  piece  was  the  usual  polit- 
ical play,  with  ward  heelers  chewing  cigars, 
"big  business,"  and  reform,  and  the  regula- 
tion final  curtain  on  a  noisy  election  night. 
It  was  a  much  less  closely  knit  and  work- 
manlike piece  than  "Fine  Feathers,"  and  yet 
I  am  inclined  to  feel  that  it  gave  more  of  the 
feeling  of  warmth  and  nourishment  that  one 
ought  to  get  from  a  good  book  or  play.  The 
reason  was  that  the  authors  were  not  so  fixed 

1 178 1 


Mr.  Walter  and  the  "No  Quarter"  School 

on  striking  a  knock-out  blow  as  in  sharing 
with  their  hearers  a  conviction  about  life  in 
general.  They  had  something  they  genuinely 
wanted  to  say.  They  were  interpreters  rather 
than  reporters,  and  gave  the  audience  some- 
thing it  might  not  have  found  for  itself. 


[  179] 


IX 

"BABBIE" 

"TTl 


'Op  o'  Me  Thumb  was  the  Cinderella  of  Madame 
Didier's  laundry  in  Soho  —  a  pale,  pinched  little  orphan, 
with  her  hair  done  up  in  a  knob  on  the  back  of  her  head, 
and  no  good  looks  and  nobody  to  care  for  her.  That  is, 
nobody  cared  for  the  real  'Op  o'  Me  Thumb,  but  the 
make-believe  one,  the  one  that  she  told  the  other  girls 
in  the  laundry  about  until  they  almost  believed  her, 
had  a  rich  father,  who,  when  the  missing  will  was  found, 
was  going  to  drive  up  to  the  laundry  in  his  great  car- 
riage and  take  her  away  with  him  and  dress  her  in 
silks  and  ermine.  And  she  had  an  absent  lover,  too,  the 
mysterious  Mr.  'Orace  Greensmith,  who  was  coming  to 
claim  her  some  day  and  who  sent  her  wonderful  dream 
presents  of  jewels  and  brooches  and  things.  Mr.  'Orace 
had  left  a  shirt  at  the  laundry  "to  be  called  for,"  but 
he  had  never  come  for  it,  and  she  did  it  up  for  him  fresh 
each  week.  One  day  when  the  other  girls  —  blooming 
wenches,  with  plenty  of  admirers  to  tote  them  off  to 
'Emstead  'Eath  of  a  bank  holiday  —  had  gone  away  and 
left  her  alone,  who  should  come  in  but  Mr.  'Orace  him- 
self, a  husky  young  cockney  with  a  handkerchief  about 
his  neck,  poor  'Op  o'  Me  Thumb's  Prince  Charming. 
Of  course,  he  didn't  understand.  It  was  like  trampling 
on  her  heart  when  he  grabbed  the  shirt  —  the  ineffable 
shirt  —  and  crammed  it  into  a  roll.  And  when  she  told 

[  180] 


"Babbie" 

him  that  she  had  ironed  it  over  for  him  every  week,  the 
best  he  could  do  was  to  give  a  great  laugh  and  want  to 
know  if  they  thought  they  were  going  to  make  him  pay 
for  all  that.  One  by  one  this  big,  good-humored  brute 
tore  down  her  golden  cobwebs,  trod  her  rainbow  bub- 
bles underfoot.  When  he  finally  went  swinging  out,  never 
to  return,  'Op  o'  Me  Thumb  took  the  crape  off  her 
arm — there  was  no  use  pretending  any  more  that  she 
was  mourning  for  some  one — and  sank  down  in  a  heap 
under  the  ironing  table  alone  with  the  wreck  of  her  poor 
little  heart.  . 


A  QUICK-WITTED,  intellectual  French- 
man, viewing  our  theatres  for  the  first  time, 
might  very  well  be  bored  by  this  piece— 
which  strongly  moved  its  audience  when  Miss 
Adams  played  it  as  a  curtain-raiser  a  few 
years  ago — and  ask  if  this  were  the  food  on 
which  our  public  fed  and  why  Miss  Adams, 
all  very  quaint  and  interesting  to  be  sure, 
should  be  so  important  and  so  popular.  Mr. 
Shaw — himself  a  sort  of  Frenchman  in  his 
clear-sighted  way  of  looking  at  things — would 
doubtless  rail  at  our  detestable  habit  of  veil- 
ing with  sugar-coated  sentiment  realities  so 
unpleasant  that  if  we  had  the  courage  to  face 
them  we  should  be  driven  perforce  to  reform- 

[  181  ] 


Second  Nights 


ing  the  social  conditions  of  laundresses.  Even 
some  of  our  theatregoers  would  doubtless  get 
little  nourishment  from  the  fragile  pathos  of 
"Op  o'  Me  Thumb,"  and  perhaps  agree  with 
a  man  I  met  the  other  day — an  enthusiastic 
performer  in  amateur  theatricals  and  there- 
fore the  most  virulent  of  dramatic  critics — 
who  dismissed  Miss  Adams  with  a  wave  of 
the  hand  and  the  phrase  "acidulous  vestal." 
Her  resources  are  undoubtedly  slight,  her 
range  limited,  yet  she  is,  perhaps,  the  most 
securely  popular  figure  on  the  American  stage. 
She  can  fill  almost  any  theatre  with  almost 
any  sort  of  play,  and  when  a  doubtful  ven- 
ture, like  the  English  version  of  "Chantecler," 
is  to  be  tried  she,  the  last  person  in  the  world 
you  might  choose  offhand  for  the  leading  role, 
is  relied  on  to  pull  it  through. 

This  is  a  curious  state  of  affairs  and  de- 
serves some  explanation.  One  of  the  underly- 
ing reasons  which  we  might  have  to  explain 
to  our  visiting  Frenchman — as  its  relevancy 
might  not  strike  him  at  first — is  the  certainty 
of  Miss  Adams's  audiences  that  whatever  she 
presents  will  be  "quite  nice."  Our  custom  in 
these  matters  is  rather  different  from  that  in 
[  182  ] 


"Babbie" 

France.  A  novelist  there  assumes  that  he  is 
addressing  an  audience  of  grown-up  readers. 
Young  girls  are  not  supposed  to  read  anything 
that  comes  along,  even  stories  in  magazines. 
Mr.  Howells  or  Mr.  Tarkington,  on  the  other 
hand,  write  not  merely  for  doctors,  lawyers, 
reporters,  and  woman  suffragists,  but  for  any 
schoolgirl  who  happens  to  be  attracted  by 
the  title  of  a  book  as  she  sees  it  on  the  library 
table  or  the  shelf  of  a  circulating  library. 
There  is  a  similar  difference  in  the  theatre. 
Without  arguing  as  to  which  custom  is  better 
in  the  long  run,  there  is  no  doubt  that  ours 
helps  to  account  for  what  might  be  called  our 
family-party  attitude  toward  art  of  all  kinds. 
If  a  book  or  play  is  "good,"  it  is  generally 
supposed  to  be  good  for  the  whole  family, 
and  an  actress  is  all  the  more  admired  and 
liked  if  her  audiences  feel  sure  that  she  is 
"just  as  nice  as  anybody,  even  though  she  is 
an  actress." 

But  all  sorts  of  stage  people  are  just  as  nice 
as  anybody — and  just  as  stupid  and  uninter- 
esting. The  great  thing  about  Miss  Adams  was 
that  she  made  niceness  exciting.  She  gave  peo- 
ple more  thrills,  being  just  as  nice  as  could  be, 

[  183 1 


Second  Nights 


than  were  given  by  others  when  they  deliber- 
ately set  out  to  be  horrid.  She  took  them  up 
into  a  thin  bright  ether  of  her  own,  where  they 
were  put  to  shame  by  their  own  earthiness. 
She  was  a  skylark,  instead  of  a  siren  on  a  rock 
twanging  away  on  a  pasteboard  harp.  Hers 
was  no  namby-pamby  niceness — an  actress 
playing  down  to  her  audience  and  on  her  good 
behavior  like  a  child  before  strangers — but  a 
militant  niceness,  a  brave,  pathetic  little  spirit, 
playing  up  for  all  it  was  worth  against  the 
brute  strength  of  a  wicked  world. 

You  will  find  this  quality,  I  think,  in  all  of 
Miss  Adams's  plays;  in  "Babbie,"  "Peter 
Pan,"  "What  Every  Woman  Knows"  (of 
which  it  is,  of  course,  the  very  essence),  "Joan 
of  Arc,"  "The  Jesters,"  and  even,  curiously 
enough,  in  "Chantecler."  And  it  is  this  one 
thing— I  am  taking  for  granted,  of  course, 
pleasing  personality,  a  voice  that  stirs,  and 
ordinary  technic — that  more  than  another 
explains  what  Maggie  Wylie  would  call  her 
"char-r-um." 

This  brave  wistfulness,  this  mingling  of 
something  elf-like  yet  very  tender  and  human, 
is  so  much  the  essence,  as  well,  of  the  plays 

[  184] 


"Babbie" 

of  Mr.  Barrie's  in  which  Miss  Adams  has  ap- 
peared, that  it  is  not  easy  to  tell  where  the 
one  leaves  off,  so  to  speak,  and  the  other  be- 
gins. The  same  spirit  seems  to  breathe  through 
player  and  play.  The  very  qualities  which 
make  it  rather  difficult  to  imagine  Miss  Adams 
breaking  up  homes  or  driving  multitudes  to 
jump  off  Brooklyn  Bridge  because  she  had 
nodded  to  some  other  man,  combined  as  they 
are  with  this  high-strung,  mounting  spirit — • 
this  dauntless  frailty— make  her  the  one  per- 
son out  of  thousands  to  impersonate  Peter 
Pan,  for  instance,  the  Boy  Who  Wouldn't 
Grow  Up. 

He  lived,  you  will  remember,  in  the  Never, 
Never,  Never  Land,  but  one  day  while  he  was 
sitting  on  the  window-ledge  listening  to  Mrs. 
Darling  tell  stories  to  Wendy  Moira  Angela, 
John  Napoleon,  and  Michael  Nicholas  Dar- 
ling, the  window  closed  suddenly  and  cut  off 
his  shadow.  Mrs.  Darling,  who  was  as  neat 
as  she  was  a  pretty  mother,  put  the  shadow 
away  in  the  top  bureau  drawer  just  as  if  it 
were  a  dress  pattern,  but  Peter  got  very  lonely 
without  it,  and  one  evening,  when  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Darling  had  gone  out  to  dinner  and  the 


Second  Nights 


children  were  asleep,  he  flew  through  the  open 
window  and  rummaged  round  until  he  found 
it  again.  The  children  awoke  just  as  he  was 
trying  to  stick  the  shadow  on  again  by  rub- 
bing it  with  a  cake  of  soap,  and  Wendy  po- 
litely sewed  it  on  his  heel  for  him. 

Then  Peter  taught  them  how  to  fly,  and 
away  they  all  went,  out  the  window,  back  to 
the  Never,  Never,  Never  Land.  Here  they 
met  Peter's  band — the  boys  who  had  fallen 
out  of  their  perambulators  while  their  nurses 
weren't  looking  and  grown  up  without  any 
mothers — and  Tinker  Bell,  who  was  only  a 
light  flickering  over  the  walls,  with  a  far- 
away sort  of  sleigh-bell  jingle,  but  was  very 
brave,  nevertheless,  and  drank  the  poison  the 
pirate  chief  left  for  Peter  and  nearly  died  for 
it;  and  the  crocodile  who  had  swallowed  the 
alarm-clock — Captain  James  Hook,  the  one- 
handed  pirate  chief,  whose  other  hand  the 
crocodile  thirsted  for,  always  knew  when  he 
was  in  danger  by  hearing  the  clock's  terrible 
approaching  tick — and  Since,  the  pirate  who 
wished  he  had  a  mother,  and  the  Redskins  and 
the  Wolves  and  all  the  rest.  They  had  many 
wonderful  adventures,  and  when  they  finally 

[  186] 


"Babbie" 

decided  that  their  mother  must  be  getting 
anxious  and  went  home,  Mrs.  Darling  wanted 
Peter  to  stay,  too.  Peter  longed  for  a  mother, 
but  when  he  was  told  that  he  would  grow  up 
and  be  put  in  an  office  and  probably  soon  be 
President,  he  had  to  refuse.  So  he  made  Wendy 
promise  to  come  every  spring  to  do  his  house- 
cleaning  and  flew  back  to  the  Never,  Never, 
Never  Land,  where  you're  always  young. 

In  a  way,  of  course,  Peter  wasn't  at  all  the 
boy  who  wouldn't  grow  up.  If  Peter  had  been 
just  a  boy,  he  would,  no  doubt,  have  viewed 
with  enthusiasm  the  prospect  of  being  in- 
ducted into  an  office  and  presently  becoming 
President.  It  is  only  grown-ups  who  know  how 
much  one  has  to  pay  to  be  rich  and  famous; 
youth  is  sweetest  when  it  has  flown.  Really, 
Peter  was  the  boy  who  grew  up  and  then 
ungrew  into  a  boy  again,  losing  on  the  way 
back  memory  and  everything  but  his  apprecia- 
tion of  youth,  so  that  when  the  play  begins  he 
doesn't  know  that  he  ever  grew  up  at  all. 

The  Barrie  spirit — now  tenderly  human, 
now  elusive  and  elfin — coasts  all  shores,  flick- 
ering from  one  to  the  other  as  Tinker  Bell's 
light  flickers  here  and  there  over  the  back 

t  is?] 


Second  Nights 


drop.  Mrs.  Darling  takes  Peter's  shadow  out 
of  the  bureau  drawer  and  talks  about  it  in  the 
same  matter-of-fact  way  that  she  would  talk 
about  John  Napoleon's  next  suit  of  clothes. 
When  the  pirates  are  routed  by  Peter's  band 
and  driven  over  the  sides  of  the  ship  into  the 
sea,  they  do  not  fall  off  as  even  a  child 
probably  would  imagine  them  doing  in  his 
vision  of  such  a  fight,  but  half  roll,  half  lift 
themselves  off,  as  though,  in  spite  of  their  ter- 
rible make-up,  they  were  children  playing  their 
parts  and  a  bit  scary  of  jumping  off,  even 
though  a  mattress  is  waiting  safely  out  of 
sight.  The  spectator  takes  this  in,  quite  as  a 
matter  of  course,  all  the  time  tremendously 
excited  by  the  straight  melodrama  of  the  fight. 
These  are  rather  obvious  examples  of  the  Bar- 
rie  involutions.  When  a  sophisticated  audience 
almost  gasp  in  suspense  because  they  are  told 
that  a  light  flickering  in  one  corner  of  the  stage 
with  a  faint  tinkle — growing  fainter  every  mo- 
ment— has  drunk  poison  and  is  about  to  die, 
and  break  into  spontaneous  and  uproarious 
applause  when  its  life  is  saved,  one  realizes 
that,  as  Mr.  Tarkington  once  said,  the  fairies 
help  Mr.  Barrie. 

[  188  ] 


"Babbie" 

I  have  a  notion  that  an  English  or  American 
audience  get  more  fun  out  of  this  sort  of  thing 
than  a  French  audience — that  the  French  are 
more  "grown  up."  A  friend  of  mine  who  saw 
"Chantecler"  on  one  of  the  earlier  nights  in 
Paris  told  of  three  keen  and  rational  young 
Frenchmen  in  plaited  shirts  and  tight  waist- 
coats who  sat  behind  him,  of  how  they  lis- 
tened in  evident  boredom  until  Chantecler 
started  to  telephone  back  to  the  barnyard  by 
the  morning-glory  vine — to  "morning-glory" 
home,  as  Rostand  idiomized  it.  They  stood  it 
until  the  bee  buzzed  inside  the  flower  in  imita- 
tion of  the  telephone  bell,  and  then  gave  it  up 
and  sank  back  with  an  "0  la-la!"  of  complete 
dismay. 

One  fancies  we  are  rather  fonder  of  fairy- 
stories — certainly  we  delight  in  the  hidden 
meaning  when  we  know  exactly  where  to  find 
it.  At  any  rate,  everybody,  old  and  young, 
liked  "  Peter  Pan"  and  found  it  hard  to  think 
of  anybody  but  Miss  Adams  playing  it.  Even 
her  mannerisms — that  odd,  half-strangled  ut- 
terance in  moments  of  excitement  and  in- 
tensity— helped  to  suggest  the  pathos  and 
brave  wistfulness  of  Peter  himself. 

[  189  1 


Second  Nights 


In  "The  Jesters"  and,  curiously  enough, 
in  "Chantecler"  Miss  Adams  won — at  least 
to  the  extent  of  maintaining  the  affection 
of  her  audience — apparently  hopeless  battles 
by  the  same  means.  "The  Jesters,"  which 
stirred  Miss  Adams's  ambition,  no  doubt 
because  Bernhardt  had  played  it,  was  a  sort 
of  Watteau  fete  galante — the  main  action 
of  which  consisted  in  a  contest  of  wits  be- 
tween two  rivals  for  a  lady's  hand,  the  one 
depending  on  verses  and  fine  clothes,  the 
other,  in  order  to  win  by  verses  alone,  dis- 
guising himself  as  a  humpbacked  jester. 
This  was  the  part  Miss  Adams  played. 

When  the  unknown  jester  was  asked  who 
he  might  be  he  replied  in  a  ballade.  He  won 
his  lady's  heart  by  a  nine-stanza  speech  set 
in  one  of  the  most  intricate  patterns  of  the 
old  French  "fixed"  verse.  One  can  hear  the 
Divine  Sarah  rolling  out  those  lovely  lines. 
Mr.  Austin  Dobson  would  doubtless  have 
enjoyed  "The  Jesters,"  even  in  translation. 
From  the  ordinary  American's  point  of  view 
it  all  had  about  the  dramatic  force  of  a  dozen 
Dresden  china  plates. 

Miss  Adams  had  not  the  vocal  equipment  to 
[  190  ] 


"Babbie" 

make  the  lines  fly  and  ring.  Many  of  her  quickly 
rippled  phrases  were  almost  unintelligible  at 
the  back  of  the  house,  and  her  habit  of  chang- 
ing vowels  into  curious  diphthong  sounds— 
"All  my  luck,  I  claim"  into  "Ool  my  luck,  I 
cle-e-em"— did  not  add  to  the  effect.  Yet 
here  again  she  took  the  young  prince  up  into 
that  crystalline  world  of  her  own;  and  every 
time  she  threw  up  her  head  with  that  half- 
whimsical,  half-defiant  gesture — that  passion- 
ate under-dogism,  as  it  were,  the  brave,  high- 
strung  spirit  seeming  at  once  to  admit  the 
body's  frailty  and  yet  refusing  to  be  afraid— 
the  audience  sent  back  its  affectionate  re- 
sponse. 

The  announcement  that  Miss  Adams  wras 
to  play  the  rooster  in  "Chantecler"  —  a  part 
intended  for  the  elder  Coquelin  and  the  very 
apotheosis,  it  would  seem,  of  domineering 
masculinity — was  greeted,  naturally,  with  a 
gasp  of  dismay.  Rostand's  play  had  been 
talked  about  for  years,  ever  since  the  after- 
noon the  elder  Coquelin  departed,  in  answer 
to  a  mysterious  telegram,  for  Rostand's  villa 
in  the  Pyrenees.  Followed  whispers  and  hints, 
thrilling  rumors,  and  delays.  Rostand  was  ill — 


Second  Nights 


bored  and  disgusted — and  that  delightfully 
stagy  happening  at  the  home  for  old  actors 
whither  Coquelin  went  to  hear  them  tell  of 
bygone  triumphs  and  thrill  them  with  his  own 
skill.  "To-night"— this  to  his  valet— "I'm 
going  to  recite  to  you  Chantecler's  'Song  to 
the  Sun'  as  you  never  heard  me  do  it  before." 
And  the  old  stars  and  faded  beauties,  listening 
down-stairs — so  the  story  goes — heard  him 
thundering  it  out,  indeed  as  never  before,  for 
next  morning  he  fell  dead — Chantecler's  last 
crow. 

Guitry  in  the  part  then;  more  quarrels, 
jealousy — clairvoyants  consulted  to  see  how 
the  play  would  turn  out.  Some  said  it  would 
succeed,  some  could  hear  the  dreadful  silence 
of  the  bored  audience;  one  genial  lady  proph- 
esied that  the  theatre  would  tumble  dow:n. 
Rostand  himself — that  sprightly  combination 
of  aesthete  and  man  of  the  world,  poet  and 
faker — was  said  to  have  said:  "And  if  it 
should  fail  now — what  a  delicious  sensation!" 
Mr.  Rostand  got  his  sensation,  or  very  near 
it.  The  piece  lost  in  the  playing.  The  actors, 
masked  and  hampered  by  their  feathers  and 
beaks  and  claws — only  the  principals  showed 
[  192  ] 


"Babbie" 

their  faces,  and  gesturing  was  of  course  impos- 
sible— were  neither  one  thing  nor  the  other. 
Comparatively  few  of  their  lines  "got  across" 
as  they  should,  and  much  of  the  play's  poetry 
and  dramatic  quality  was  untranslatable  into 
the  visual  terms  required  by  the  stage. 

Such  the  ordeal — needless  to  say  it  prob- 
ably didn't  appear  so  to  our  ambitious  little 
Babbie — which  confronted  Miss  Adams:  to 
play  a  part  for  which  she  seemed  utterly  un- 
fitted, in  a  translated  play  which  was  scarcely 
a  success  in  the  author's  original  words. 

The  result  was  interesting  and  character- 
istic. Miss  Adams  has  the  intelligence  and 
artistic  instinct  to  make  her  impersonation, 
whatever  it  is,  pleasing  and  consistent  with 
itself.  Moreover,  there  is  much  of  Chantecler's 
tragedy — the  tragedy  of  the  cock  who  thought 
he  crowed  the  sun  up  and  gave  the  world 
its  light  each  morning,  only  to  find  that  he 
was  only  a  part  of  the  great  scheme  and  that 
the  sun  came  up  quite  well  without  him— 
there  is  much  of  the  pathos  of  this  which  falls, 
or  may  readily  be  twisted,  into  that  vein  in 
which  Miss  Adams  is  most  appealing. 

The  brave  spirit,  soaring  and  unafraid  in 

[  193  3 


Second  Nights 


spite  of  physical  frailty;  that  dauntless  weak- 
ness, lifted  and  suffused  with  poetic  fire;  the 
same  note  struck  and  sustained — with  slender 
hands  clinched  and  half-strangled  utterance— 
in  "L'Aiglon,"  "The  Jesters,"  and  in  "Peter 
Pan,"  could  be  used  here.  What  could  be  done 
she  did,  but  not  for  a  moment  was  there  any 
illusion  of  masculinity  or  of  the  particular 
thing  which  Rostand  intended  to  be  Chante- 
cler.  In  short,  Miss  Adams  scored  with  exactly 
the  same  means  she  had  used  heretofore — the 
key  was  set  at  the  start  when,  instead  of  an 
excited  manager  rushing  out  to  stop  the  raising 
of  the  curtain  in  order  to  recite  the  ingenious 
prologue  which  prepares  the  audience  for  what 
is  to  come,  Miss  Adams  herself,  in  a  simple 
white  dress  with  all  her  char-r-um  turned  on 
full  force,  prettily  recited  the  lines.  It  was  set 
again  a  moment  later  when  Chantecler  him- 
self (almost  the  smallest  figure  there)  strutted 
into  the  barnyard  and  delivered  his  first  apos- 
trophe to  the  sun.  The  make-up  was  perfect, 
the  little  strut  cleverly  assumed,  and  the  "I 
adore  you,"  etc.,  exquisitely  read,  but  its 
low,  sweet,  tremulous  eloquence  was  alto- 
gether feminine — the  eloquence,  perhaps,  of 

[  194  I 


"Babbie" 

one  who  knew  she  was  loved,  not  honest  old 
Chantecler  addressing  the  deity  he  was  proud 
to  command.  No  admiration  for  Miss  Adams's 
gifts  or  approval  of  her  artistic  ambition  or 
interest  in  this  novel,  beautiful,  and  enter- 
taining play  could  blind  one  to  the  fact  that 
she  was  quite  impossible  in  the  part,  or,  rather, 
that  the  real  Chantecler  was  impossible  for 
her.  Char-r-um  is  a  wonderful  thing,  but  a 
man's  a  man  for  a'  that.  And  so  is  a  rooster. 
The  same  weapons  with  which  Miss  Adams 
won  a  doubtful  victory,  or  at  any  rate  de- 
fended herself,  in  these  French  plays  were  used 
in  "What  Every  Woman  Knows."  What  every 
woman  or  at  least  what  every  successful  wife 
knows,  according  to  Mr.  Barrie,  is  that  al- 
though apparently  her  husband  does  his  own 
part  of  the  world's  work  himself,  it  is  she  who, 
by  believing  in  and  encouraging  him,  by  filling 
in  the  gaps,  fits  him  to  do  it.  A  raw  Scotch 
youth,  with  unbounded  force,  ambition,  and 
self-confidence,  succeeding  brilliantly  in  Par- 
liament because  his  wonderful  little  wife  sug- 
gested the  best  part  of  the  speeches  to  him, 
while  she  sat  by  apparently  only  interested  in 
knitting  stockings,  and  smoothed  out  a  thou- 


Second  Nights 


sand  difficulties  with  her  tact  and  cleverness, 
is  the  shape  in  which  Mr.  Barrie  chooses  to 
embody  a  general  truth. 

Here,  as  elsewhere,  his  characters  are  not 
people  so  much  as  they  are  human  qualities, 
covered  with  ordinary  clothes.  The  things 
they  do  may  be  fantastic,  but  the  things  they 
think  and  feel  are  real  and  true.  He  does  not 
say:  "Now  this  objective  picture  called  Mrs. 
Shand,  consisting  of  one  female  face,  one  dress 
etc.,  etc.,  would  never  send  this  other  ob- 
jective picture  called  Mr.  Shand  and  consist- 
ing of  one  top-hat,  one  frock  coat,  two  polished 
shoes,  etc.,  etc.,  to  a  country  house-party  with 
another  woman."  What  he  does  say  is  some- 
thing like  this:  "Love,  imagination,  charm, 
can  generally  get  the  better,  in  the  end,  of 
stupid  sensuousness.  A  clever,  witty,  delight- 
ful little  woman  like  Mrs.  Shand,  who  realizes 
how  indispensable  she  is  to  her  self-absorbed 
husband's  career,  knows  that  she  has  nothing 
serious  to  fear  from  a  merely  handsome, 
stupid  charmer  who  has  fascinated  the  poor 
fellow  for  the  moment  because  in  his  hard- 
working, commonplace  life  he  has  never  met 
such  a  person  before."  Give  him  a  little  rope 

1 196] 


"Babbie" 

and  he  will  cure  himself — the  house-party  is 
merely  the  casual  shape  in  which  this  general 
truth  is  embodied. 

If  the  intensive  art  of  Mr.  Barrie  does  not 
always  hit  one  like  a  pile-driver,  it  exerts, 
nevertheless,  an  astonishing  power.  I  was  im- 
pressed with  this  on  seeing  "What  Every 
Woman  Knows"  for  the  second  time  at  a 
Wednesday  matinee,  when  a  crowded  house 
and  the  guile  of  a  ticket  speculator  com- 
bined to  put  me  in  the  last  row  in  the  bal- 
cony, in  J-I9-  The  special  peculiarity  of  seat 
J-I9  at  the  Empire  Theatre  was  that  it  had 
literally  no  floor  underneath  it,  but  was 
mysteriously  attached  after  the  manner  of  a 
bracket.  Balanced  thus,  legs  dangling,  head 
almost  touching  the  roof,  and  enveloped  and 
half  asphyxiated  in  a  matinee  atmosphere  of 
steam-heat,  caramels,  violets,  and  perfumed 
clothes,  a  mere  man  was  helpless,  peculiarly 
unable  to  interpose  any  resistance  to  the  col- 
lective emotion  of  the  female  mob.  As  the  play 
went  on  and  Mrs.  Shand's  cleverness,  pluck, 
and  self-renunciation  were  contrasted  more 
and  more  with  the  selfishness  of  her  husband, 
a  tense  and  increasing  sympathy  and  excite- 

[  197  1 


Second  Nights 


ment  were  exhaled  from  the  audience.  Spas- 
modic little  bursts  of  applause  came  at  unex- 
pected moments — moments  where  the  pathetic 
heroism  of  the  little  wife's  existence  seemed  to 
receive,  at  least,  tacit  recognition.  When  at 
last  Mrs.  Shand  appeared  at  the  countess's 
country  house  just  as  her  husband  was  begin- 
ning to  be  disillusioned  about  Lady  Sybil,  to 
find  that  his  hand  had  lost  its  cunning  and 
that  somehow  he  could  not  write  a  speech  as 
he  used  to  do,  and  Mr.  Venables,  the  party 
whip,  was  beginning  to  think  that  his  young 
protege  was  a  false  alarm,  it  was  almost  as  if 
Sheridan  had  galloped  in  on  a  real  horse  and 
ordered  the  ranks  to  reform  and  charge. 

Maggie  Shand  had  brought  a  second  draft 
of  her  husband's  speech  with  her,  and  she  in- 
tended that  they  should  go  over  it  together 
and  that  he  should  be  made  to  believe  as  usual 
that  it  was  all  his.  The  good-humored  countess, 
however,  slyly  takes  the  speech  from  the  bag 
and  sends  it  to  Mr.  Venables,  who  is  working 
in  the  garden.  When  the  humorless  Shand  dis- 
covers this  apparently  ghastly  blunder — that 
his  wife's  corrections  should  go  to  Mr.  Ven- 
ables as  his  own — and  Maggie,  knowing  well 
[  198  ] 


"Babbie" 

what  is  going  to  happen  and  fighting  desper- 
ately to  keep  intact  her  husband's  belief  in 
himself,  cries:  "I  am  so  ashamed,  John — Oh, 
I  am  so  ashamed!"  a  breeze  of  whispers 
leaped  across  the  house. 

Then  Mr.  Venables  was  discovered  ap- 
proaching. "Now,"  cries  the  countess,  "now 
we  shall  see  just  what  part  you  did  have  in 
this!"  And  before  Mr.  Venables  reached  the 
stage,  before  he  had  said  how  good  the  speech 
wras  and  started  to  read  some  of  its  irresistible 
"Shandisms,"  before,  in  short,  the  moment 
had  at  all  arrived,  the  whole  balcony  began  to 
applaud.  It  was  as  if  beneath  the  droll  comedy 
on  the  stage  a  sort  of  battle  of  sex  was  being 
played,  as  if  each  woman  there  saw  in  Maggie 
Shand's  self-denial  her  own  life  and  the  other 
lives  of  that  sex  whose  greatest  work  is  un- 
heralded, which  realizes  itself  most  completely 
often  through  the  completest  renunciation. 
Overpowered  by  the  collective  emotion,  dan- 
gling helplessly  near  the  roof  in  J-I9,  one 
seemed  to  hear  bugles  and  battle-cries  under 
those  quick  whispers  and  the  patter  of  gloves. 

An  actress  who  can  bring  about  such  results, 
however  slight  her  resources  or  however  much 

I  199  ] 


Second  Nights 


she  may  owe  to  the  author,  must  have  played 
an  important  part  not  only  in  the  story  of 
the  theatre,  but  in  the  feelings,  opinions,  and 
possibly  subsequent  actions  of  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  people.  If  the  thrills  of  all  those 
poignant  moments — Babbie's  elf-like  girlish- 
ness,  Peter  Pan's  cry  about  the  fairies,  such 
instants  as  this  in  "What  Every  Woman 
Knows "•  —could  all  be  gathered  together  as 
little  streams  make  a  river,  how  wonderful 
might  appear  this  mere  thing,  "char-r-um." 
We  saw  it  in  an  unexpected  light,  indeed,  in 
the  June  after  "What  Every  Woman  Knows" 
was  played,  when  with  trumpets  and  armor 
and  clashing  swords  and  all  the  king's  horses 
and  men,  Miss  Adams  played  "Joan  of  Arc" 
one  night,  out-of-doors,  in  the  quiet  stadium 
at  Cambridge.  It  had  been  a  dream  of  hers  for 
years,  and  for  our  wistful  little  Babbie  to 
march  thus  at  the  head  of  her  stage  legions, 
banners  flying,  into  the  heart  of  our  oldest  seat 
of  learning  must  have  been — even  more,  per- 
haps, than  the  colossal  joke  of  playing  "Chan- 
tecler"-— one  of  the  adventures  of  a  lifetime. 

I  cannot  speak  of  the  performance,  as  I  but 
viewed  it  through  gossip  and  the  papers  from 
[  200  ] 


"Babbie" 

afar,  but  it  was,  at  any  rate,  both  unusual  and 
impressive.  Nature  herself,  often  less  gracious 
than  sentimental  theatre  audiences,  appeared 
to  smile  on  the  quaint  endeavor.  A  new  moon 
hung  over  the  stadium  and  the  woods  of  Dom- 
remy,  and  not  a  breath  of  wind  ventured  to 
stir  against  the  players'  voices.  "A  vast  con- 
course of  Bostonians  and  human  beings,"  as 
one  newspaper  purist  described  the  audience, 
filled  the  amphitheatre  and  so  quiet  did  they 
sit  that  Miss  Adams's  vibrant  treble  carried 
to  all  but  the  topmost  seats. 

It  was  interesting  to  see  the  resources  of  so 
powerful  a  theatrical  general  as  Mr.  Charles 
Frohman  absolutely  at  the  command  of  one 
frail  little  woman — our  plaintive,  plucky 
Babbie;  the  astonishing  power,  measured  in 
the  earthiest  terms  of  cash,  special  trains, 
"supers,"  and  so  on,  wielded  by  such  an  illu- 
sive, ethereal  thing  as  an  actress's  charm.  One 
hundred  horses,  specially  trained  to  the  pecu- 
liarity of  clanking  armor,  were  sent  from  New 
York  and  more  gathered  in  from  Boston.  Miss 
Adams  had  but  to  say,  when  the  preliminaries 
were  being  discussed,  "And  one  thousand 
men" — and  there  were  one  thousand  men,  and 
[  201  ] 


Second  Nights 


more.  When,  on  the  eve  of  the  first  night,  one 
of  the  court  personages  seemed  lacking  in  per- 
sonal attendants,  and  the  stage-director  ex- 
plained that  no  ladies  in  waiting  had  been 
provided,  Miss  Adams  had  but  to  say,  "Get 
them!"  and  straightway  they  were  there, 
twelve  of  them,  properly  costumed  and  re- 
hearsed. An  actress  whom  children  cry  for 
and  simple  young  ladies  adore  can  move 
mountains  and  make  red-faced  men  with 
thick  necks  get  down  on  their  knees.  There 
is  steel  beneath  the  velvet. 


[  202  ] 


_  9^  /V7"T*\  ^g          ______  __ 

<£$      .  J2  —  Q  —  Eh 

'^i^  «••••«••—.  —  •  i  '>/£' 

X 

ON  THE   BOWERY  AGAIN 


IN  the  manager's  office  at  Miner's  Bowery 
Theatre  a  circular  cardboard  chart  hangs  on 
the  wall.  It  consists  of  two  disks,  set  one  on 
top  of  the  other  and  marked  like  clock  faces, 
the  inner  with  the  names  of  cities,  the  outer 
with  the  names  of  burlesque  companies  play- 
ing there. 

After  the  show  is  over  on  Saturday  night 
and  the  ushers  are  sweeping  up  the  cigar  butts 
and  peanut  shells  and  the  musicians  have 
gone  round  the  corner  for  their  beers,  you  can 
imagine  Mr.  Tom  Miner  stepping  over  to  this 
indicator  and  giving  the  outer  disk  a  turn. 
'The  Ginger  Girls,"  who  were  at  Newark, 
are  now  in  Paterson;  "The  Harem  Favorites" 
have  moved  from  Utica  to  Buffalo.  And  what 
is  indicated  there  is  actually  happening  over 
several  thousand  miles  of  "road."  As  the 
cardboard  wheel  turns  you  can  imagine,  in 
the  dark  theatre  alleys  of  thirty  or  forty  cities, 
as  many  trucks  jolting  away  to  the  station 
[  203  ] 


Second  Nights 


with  their  loads  of  scenery,  as  many  Irish  and 
Hebrew  comedians  and  deep-voiced  leading 
ladies  and  little  soubrettes  with  yellow  curls 
and  an  army  of  sturdy  chorus  nymphs, 
scrubbing  off  their  make-up,  packing  their 
battered  trunks,  and  preparing  to  hit  the  trail. 

Their  posters — green-whiskered  Irishmen 
and  hour-glass  Amazons  in  tights — occasion- 
ally drift  across  the  eye  from  some  back  street 
bill-board  as  the  "L"  train  rumbles  by.  No 
first-night  reviewers  acclaim  them ;  their  com- 
ing is  hidden  away  in  a  microscopic  line  of 
type;  for  the  polite  theatre  world  they  do 
not  so  much  as  exist.  Yet  somewhere,  every 
afternoon  and  evening,  be  it  May  or  Decem- 
ber, they  are  playing;  and  if  they  were  to 
get  together  and  march  down  Fifth  Avenue 
behind  their  bands,  the  street  might  be  filled 
all  the  way  from  Forty-second  Street  to  Wash- 
ington Square. 

Like  the  spokes  of  a  wheel  whose  rim  touches 
Baltimore  and  Toronto,  Boston  and  Omaha, 
these  strange  little  bands  of  slap-stick  trou- 
badours, all  fashioned  on  much  the  same  pat- 
tern, follow  each  other  round  and  round.  The 
sureness  of  the  thing,  compared  with  ordinary 
[  204  ] 


On  the  Bowery  Again 


stage  vicissitudes,  is  beyond  all  belief.  Two 
shows  a  day,  forty  weeks  in  the  year — only  a 
factory  or  the  most  dazzling  star  knows  such 
stability  as  this. 

A  leading  man  in  the  average  serious  play 
marches  up  to  his  first  night  about  as  he  might 
march  up  to  a  row  of  belching  cannon.  If  the 
audience  doesn't  damn  him  the  critics  will,  or 
if  both  are  kind  and  he  wins  a  "personal  suc- 
cess" there  are  many  chances  to  one  that  the 
play  will  fail  and  fade  away  after  a  limping 
fortnight.  But  when  the  Hebrew  comedian 
with  the  "Oriental  Rosebuds"  sticks  a  black 
patch  over  two  of  his  front  teeth  and  pulls  his 
flat  derby  hat  down  over  his  ears  on  the  1st 
of  September,  he  knows  as  surely  as  he  can 
know  anything  that  on  January  27  his  ad- 
dress will  be,  for  instance,  the  "Star  and 
Garter,"  Chicago,  and  that  in  the  last  week 
in  May  he  will  be  playing  at  the  Empire  in 
Hoboken,  ere  retiring  to  his  summer  place  in 
Asbury  Park. 

Real  burlesque,  like  that  which  used  to  be 
seen  at  Weber  and  Fields,  may  be  satire  of  a 
very  "legitimate"  and  witty  sort.  Miss  Fay 
Templeton's  delicious  parody  of  "Bunty, "  in 

[  205  ] 


Second  Nights 


which  she  duplicated  almost  perfectly  the 
prim  little  Scotch  girl's  mannerisms  and  ac- 
cent, yet  by  certain  exaggerations  here  and 
there  contrived  to  make  the  whole  ridiculous, 
was  burlesque  at  its  best.  So  was  that  classic 
scene  in  which  Fields  cried,  "Gott!  How  I  lof 
you!"  while  he  jabbed  an  affectionate  fore- 
finger into  poor  little  Weber's  blinking  eyes. 

The  "burlesque"  of  the  popular-price  cir- 
cuits is  quite  another  thing — merely  a  rough- 
house  musical  show  without  satirical  intent- 
yet  it  has  its  rules,  like  anything  else,  and  is 
designed  just  as  surely  to  please  its  special 
audience  as  the  Gaiety  girl  or  a  Drury  Lane 
melodrama.  Of  late  years  there  has  been  here 
and  there  an  endeavor  to  cut  out  the  "rough 
stuff,"  so  successful  that  burlesque  now  often 
means  merely  a  cheap  edition  of  Broadway 
musical  comedy,  a  trifle  brassier  and  more 
mechanical,  perhaps,  than  the  original.  The 
original  article — the  old-fashioned  slap-stick 
burlesque  of  the  'T'row  Him  Down  Mc- 
Clusky!"  school,  the  sort  with  which  Harvard 
freshmen  used  to  refresh  their  overcivilized 
souls  on  a  Saturday  evening  at  the  Old  How- 
ard, which  still  survives  here  and  there  in 
[  206  ] 


On  the  Bowery  Again 


spite  of  the  cruel  spread  of  refinement — this 
had  a  flavor  all  its  own. 

The  chorus  carried  spears  in  those  days  and 
were  built  like  grenadiers.  Amazons  they  were 
truly  called,  for  there  was  that  in  their  size 
and  noble  contour  and  indifference  to  what- 
ever was  said  that  seemed  to  put  them  above 
the  insect  race  of  men  absurdly  plotting  their 
discomfiture  and  undoing.  Particularly  was 
this  true  of  the  leading  woman — slightly  smil- 
ing, indifferent  alike  to  associates  and  audi- 
ence, confident  that  the  mere  sight  of  her 
was  something  no  words  could  adorn,  she 
seemed  to  have  come  from  a  world  of  her  own 
and  but  to  have  lent  herself  to  the  festivities 
of  the  evening.  Men,  behind  the  footlights  or 
in  front  of  them,  were  but  "boys"  to  her, 
amusing  in  their  harmless  antics ;  and  when  the 
green-whiskered  Irishman,  with  a  killing  wink 
at  the  audience,  marched  behind  her  as  she 
walked,  holding  his  hands  apart  to  indicate 
her  breadth  of  beam,  'twas  not  the  impudence 
that  impressed  so  much  as  the  majesty  with 
which  she  swam  above  it,  serene  as  a  Broad- 
way policeman. 

Mrs.  Gotrox,  or  some  name  similarly  sug- 
[  207  ] 


Second  Nights 


gestive  of  "Fifth  Avenue"  and  "Society/'  she 
was  called  in  the  play — Miss  Lillian  Russell,  in 
the  old  Weber  and  Fields  days,  was  but  a  finer 
flowering  of  the  type — her  daughter  the  lively 
soubrette.  Then  there  were  the  two  slap-stick 
comedians  trying  to  break  into  society  and 
always  fighting  and  knocking  each  other  down ; 
the  comic  Hebrew,  forever  embarrassed  by 
the  difficulty  of  keeping  his  money  and  spend- 
ing it  like  a  "sport";  the  effeminate  young 
man,  vastly  relished  by  the  riotously  con- 
temptuous audience;  and  then  the  lesser  fig- 
ures, including  the  four  harassed  young  men 
who  appeared  in  breathless  succession  as  wait- 
ers, policemen,  Bowery  toughs,  and  so  on, 
and' "doubled"  in  front  of  the  back  drop  at 
last,  while  the  final  scene  was  being  set,  as  a 
sailor's  male  quartet. 

None  of  your  Bond  Street  tea-rooms  here, 
titled  youths  in  top-hats  and  gardenias,  lan- 
guishing milliners'  apprentices,  exquisite  as 
orchids  whatever  their  morals  might  be.  The 
slap-stick  comedians,  in  baggy  trousers  and 
undershirts,  came  down  to  the  footlights— 

"  Say !    I-was-walkin'-down-the-street-the- 
other-day-an'-I-saw-a-dog— 
[  208  ] 


On  the  Bowery  Again 


"What!   You-said-I-was-a-dog-    '  Slap!- 
— and  so  on. 

The  Irish  comedian  was  considered  de- 
lightfully droll  when  he  spat  in  his  waistcoat 
pocket  or  sprayed  the  German  comedian  from 
an  enormous  bulb  of  insect-powder;  and  when 
the  economical  Hebrew  was  obliged  to  "open 
wine"  to  entertain  the  society  leader,  one 
must  expect  the  unfortunate  man  to  clean  his 
finger  nails,  and  possibly  his  ears,  with  the 
table-knife;  and  when  Mrs.  Gotrox's  dashing 
friend,  Mr.  Wallingford  Skinem,  exasperated 
at  his  lack  of  sporting  spirit,  emptied  the  salad 
bowl  over  his  head,  thriftily  to  scrape  the 
salad  off  and  cram  it  in  his  mouth — robust 
humor,  as  the  critics  say,  but,  then,  so  was  the 
taste  of  the  audience;  and  when  the  comedian 
declared  that  he  wouldn't  marry  a  girl  until 
he  had  seen  her  in  a  bathing  suit—  "you 
wouldn't  buy  a  watch  unless  you  could  see 
the  works"-— the  crowd  promptly  responded, 
appearing  to  agree,  young  women  no  less 
than  their  beaming  escorts,  on  the  sanity  of 
the  observation  as  well  as  its  wit. 

The  slap-stick  has  long  since  been  consid- 
ered uninspired;  gone  are  the  hour-glass  Ama- 
[  209  ] 


Second  Nights 


zons  and  their  spears;  yet  blank  cartridges, 
steps  that  collapse  and  shoot  the  comedian  to 
the  bottom,  siphons  and  pails  of  paste  or  soap- 
suds are  still  important  parts  of  the  plot,  and, 
though  the  ballad-singer  may  fairly  swoon 
away  in  sentiment,  the  comedian  must  quickly 
follow  and  knock  somebody  down,  or  fire  off  a 
few  blank  cartridges,  or  pour  the  soup  on 
somebody's  head. 

The  young  ladies'  seminary  is  almost  as 
necessary  to  old-fashioned  burlesque  as  a  bed 
used  to  be  to  Mr.  Belasco.  It  makes  little 
difference  whether  the  scene  is  Coney  Island 
or  the  Metropolitan  Tower,  "  Kitty's  Friends 
from  the  Seminary"  can  always  be  there.  They 
may  come  in  red  satin  tights  or  bathing  suits 
or  green  dress  suits  with  green  top-hats,  but 
they  are  Kitty's  Friends  from  the  Seminary 
just  the  same. 

It  is  to  the  seminary  that  the  Hebrew  co- 
median— whose  daughter  Kitty  is  studying 
there — and  the  German  comedian — disguised 
as  a  baron  looking  for  an  American  heiress- 
come  just  as  the  young  ladies,  in  pink  tights 
and  white  sweaters,  are  about  to  take  their 
exercise.  Kitty  explains  that  they  are  "all 

[    210    ] 


On  the  Bowery  Again 


ready  for  gym,"  and  Mr.  Coblinsky  remarks 
that,  by  golly,  he  should  say  they  were  ready 
for  Jim;  and  just  then  Mr.  Wallingford  Skinem 
arrives  and  induces  both  gentlemen  to  take 
out  life  insurance. 

As  they  start  to  shoot  themselves  so  that 
they  can  get  the  money  right  away,  it  appears 
that  night  has  fallen  and  that  it  is  time  to  rob 
the  seminary.  A  ladder  is  raised  to  the  garden 
wall  and  Mr.  Coblinsky  chosen  to  climb  it, 
while  Skinem  keeps  a  watch  below.  Half-way 
up  he  falls  between  the  rungs,  of  course,  and 
the  audience  nearly  dies  laughing  as  he  tries  to 
lift  himself  out  by  the  seat  of  his  trousers 
while  the  orchestra  man  turns  a  ratchet  or 
clanks  a  cow-bell. 

Meanwhile,  the  seminary  catches  fire  and 
Kitty's  friends,  in  pajamas  now,  jump  one  by 
one  into  a  life-net,  and  then,  while  the  sailors' 
male  quartet  gives  an  imitation  of  a  cal- 
liope, the  scene  shifts  to  show  Kitty's  friends 
sound  asleep  in  their  dormitory  (evidently  not 
touched  by  the  fire),  while  the  would-be  bur- 
glars enter  from  a  skylight  disguised  as  paper- 
hangers.  Ensues  a  comic  paper-hanging  scene, 
in  which  the  Baron  becomes  tangled  in  the 

[   211    ] 


Second  Nights 


wall-paper  and  finally  receives  most  of  the  pail 
of  paste  in  his  face,  licking  off  what  he  can 
with  great  relish.  Mr.  Coblinsky  says  that  he 
is  a  stenographer  in  a  livery-stable  and  stenogs 
the  hay  up  to  the  horses,  and  dashing  Mr. 
Skinem  asks  the  Principal  if  she  has  any  chil- 
dren. She  says  that  she  has  two  nice  little  boys, 
thank  you,  and  he  says  not  to  thank  him. 
And  then  Kitty's  friends  come  in  again  and  sing 
"String  a  ring  of  roses  round  your  Ro-o-o-sie" 
and  "When  that  midnight  choo-choo  leaves 
for  Alabam,"  and  by  now  it's  summer  and 
time  for  Kitty's  friends  to  change  into  ball 
gowns  and  appear  at  supper  on  the  Waldorf- 
Astoria  roof. 

It  was  a  sign  on  a  Ninth  Avenue  ash  can, 

BILLY  WATSON  AND  His  BEEF  TRUST 
BEAUTIES 

which  lured  me  recently  to  the  outskirts  of 
farthest  Brooklyn  for  a  somewhat  closer  study 
of  burlesque.  It  was  one  of  those  rainy  winter 
days  when  the  sponge-like  sky,  not  content  to 
squeeze  itself  over  the  town,  seems  to  sag  into 
the  very  streets  and  the  world  is  so  muffled 
[  212  ] 


On  the  Bowery  Again 


and  opaque  that  one  is  almost  surprised  to 
find  its  ordinary  wheels  still  turning. 

Under  the  river  and  out  again,  through  in- 
terminable streets,  alike  in  dismalness  and 
more  dismal  still  under  the  cold  winter  rain, 
and  then,  when  it  seemed  as  if  one  must  have 
taken  the  wrong  car,  there  was  a  big,  warm, 
crowded  theatre,  full  of  band  music  and  smoke 
and  the  smell  of  chocolate  and  spearmint,  and 
men,  women,  and  children  roaring  at  "  Kraus- 
meyer's  Alley." 

Where  they  came  from,  how  they  could 
leave  their  homes  or  work — they  and  the  thou- 
sands like  them  crowding  similar  houses  in 
Eighth  Avenue,  the  Bronx,  Cincinnati,  Min- 
neapolis, goodness  knows  where,  every  after- 
noon in  the  week — that  is  one  of  the  mys- 
teries. Here  they  were,  at  any  rate,  and  there 
on  the  stage  was  Mr.  Billy  Watson — baggy 
comedian's  clothes,  toothpick  in  his  mouth, 
red  nose,  cuffs  tied  with  ribbons,  hatchet  in 
his  pocket — a  sort  of  mixed-ale  Cyrano  strid- 
ing, impudent  and  serene,  through  this  slap- 
stick epic  of  the  "  Irish  an'  the  Dutch." 

Mr.  Watson,  as  one  might  gather  from  the 
name  bestowed  on  his  assistants — its  enchant- 
[  213  ] 


Second  Nights 


ing  connotation  flashed  across  his  mind  at  the 
time  of  the  beef-trust  investigation  and  he  has 
used  it  ever  since — belongs  to  the  classic  or 
Boeotian  school  of  burlesque,  uncontaminated, 
or  nearly  so,  by  the  soft  Ionian  refinements  of 
musical  comedy.  "  Krausmeyer's  Alley"  goes 
back  to  the  days  when  there  were  shanties  and 
goats  in  New  York  where  apartment-houses 
stand  now.  Krausmeyer's  shanty  and  Gro- 
gan's  are  perched  on  adjoining  rocks  with  a 
clothes-line  between,  or,  in  more  spirited  mo- 
ments, a  shower  of  cats.  You  will  have  seen 
this  shower  of  cats  on  some  back-street  bill- 
board, perhaps,  and  thought  it  but  a  fanciful 
decoration,  a  flower  of  the  same  order  of  lith- 
ography as  that  from  which  sprung  the  comic 
valentine,  but  Krausmeyer  and  Grogan  actu- 
ally throw  them  in  the  play  and  have  been 
throwing  them  these  eighteen  or  twenty  years. 
The  action  throughout  is  set  in  this  simple 
Elizabethan  key.  The  slap-stick  has  gone  out 
even  among  such  classicists  as  Mr.  Watson, 
but  a  hatchet  takes  its  place,  and  he  would  be 
as  lost  without  it  as  a  Drury  Lane  villain  with- 
out his  gold  cigarette  case.  How  roguish  its  ap- 
pearance as  he  asks,  "Has  anybody  here  seen 

[  214] 


On  the  Bowery  Again 


Grogan  ?"  and  as  he  embraces  the  leading  lady, 
how  wittily — unseen  by  her— he  taps  her  on 
the  back  with  it  while  the  bass  drum  goes 
"Pom!"  or  the  orchestra  makes  a  sound  like 
rapping  a  hollow  cocoanut. 

When  Krausmeyer  enters  Grogan  thinks  he 
"smells  a  mushrat,"  and  Grogan,  planting  his 
feet  on  the  table,  is  requested  to  take  them  off 
and  "give  the  limburger  a  chance."  We  are 
scarcely  introduced  to  the  alley  before  there  is 
a  general  fight.  And  the  first  act  ends — after 
the  Beef  Trust  Beauties,  appropriately  dressed 
in  red  silk  tights,  red  claw-hammer  coats,  and 
red  top-hats  to  represent  "Fifth  Avenue 
swells,"  have  danced  and  sung — in  a  "fight, 
battle  scene,  and  riot." 

We  go  to  Ireland  in  the  next  act,  where  a 
medley  of  Irish  songs  are  sung  by  the  com- 
pany's handsome  soloist  and  the  Beef  Trust 
Beauties  appear  as  "French  girls  invited  from 
the  Parisienne,"  and  then  Grogan  and  Kraus- 
meyer fight  again.  Then  the  scene  shifts  to 
New  York  and  the  christening  of  little  Philip 
Krausmeyer,  with  the  Beef  Trust  Beauties 
metamorphosed  into  "grown-up  kids  from  the 
alley."  There  is  vivid  repartee  about  little 

[215 1 


Second  Nights 


Philip's  resemblance  to  Grogan,  ending  with 
what  the  programme  describes  as  a  "fight  to  a 
finish,"  and  down  goes  the  curtain  on  "Auld 
Lang  Syne."  Spirited,  slap-bang  stuff,  it  will 
be  observed,  fit  for  a  generation  which  sang 
'Throw  him  down,  McClusky!"  from  the 
heart  and  knew  naught  of  tea  dances  or 
cabarets. 

The  somewhat  staggering  effect  produced 
by  the  sight  of  that  crowded  theatre,  in  a 
region  and  on  an  afternoon  when  you  would 
scarce  expect  to  find  any  one  abroad,  was  in- 
creased when  I  endeavored  to  engage  Mr. 
Watson  on  the  more  intimate  and  personal 
phases  of  his  art. 

To  see  him  on  the  stage,  strings  on  his  cuffs, 
carrot  in  his  buttonhole,  hatchet  in  his  pocket, 
the  picture  of  impudent  good  humor,  you 
might  expect  to  be  received  with  a  wink  and 
an  "I  got  you,  Steve!"  and  be  promptly  rioted 
away  on  a  gale  of  breezy  anecdote.  A  slap- 
stick troubadour  for  thirty  years,  the  captain 
of  the  Beef  Trust  Beauties — there  must  be  a 
laugh  in  every  line!  Alas  for  stage  illusion! 
The  Krausmeyer  I  found  in  the  star's  dressing- 
room,  climbing  into  business  clothes — stiff 

[  216] 


On  the  Bowery  Again 


white  shirt,  banker's  cutaway,  opulent  dia- 
mond ring — could  scarcely  have  been  less  in- 
terested in  the  merely  spiritual  aspects  of  his 
trade  if  he  had  been  a  hotel  keeper  or  a  popu- 
lar novelist. 

The  wind,  it  appeared,  blowing  through  the 
slightly  open  window  that  afternoon,  had 
started  an  ache  in  his  side.  The  manager, 
deeply  concerned,  thought  of  massage,  a  Turk- 
ish bath.  One  of  the  more  elephantine  of  the 
beef-trusters,  knocking  timidly  at  the  great 
man's  door,  suggested  capsicum  vaseline.  In 
the  pauses  of  this  colloquy  I  spoke  of  the  com- 
mon ignorance  of  the  extent  and  importance  of 
burlesque  and  the  desire  of  the  public  to  know 
more  of  one  who  stood  so  evidently  in  the  fore- 
rank  and  front  of  it.  Mr.  Watson  nodded  and 
thought  that  possibly  capsicum  vaseline  might 
be  the  thing,  after  all.  It  was  then  a  question 
of  who  should  rub  it  in  and  when  and  where 
the  operation  should  take  place. 

"Now  you,  Mr.  Watson,"  I  resumed  with  a 
jovial  air,  after  listening  some  time  to  this  dis- 
cussion, "occupy,  to  your  branch  of  the  pro- 
fession, the  same  position  that  John  Drew 
does  to  his " 

[217 1 


Second  Nights 


Mr.  Watson  readily  assented  and  turning  to 
his  manager  wanted  to  know  what  on  earth 
had  become  of  those  keys.  This  subject  was 
considered  at  length  and  from  various  angles, 
the  hopeful  representative  of  the  uninformed 
public  biding  his  time  as  best  he  might — the 
final  conclusion  being  that  "the  boy  had  lost 
them."  So  far  so  good — a  new  boy  to-morrow, 
evidently. 

The  mention  of  Al  Reeves  occurred  to  me  as 
a  possible  means  of  luring  Mr.  Watson's  atten- 
tion. Mr.  Reeves,  it  should  be  explained,  is  an- 
other king  of  burlesque,  almost,  if  not  quite,  as 
famous  as  Mr.  Watson.  One  catches  glimpses 
of  him,  now  and  then,  bowling  down  Broad- 
way in  his  pale-green  limousine,  his  name  on  a 
brass  plate  on  each  door — an  ornate  chariot, 
somewhat  between  a  pagoda  and  one  of  the 
glass-sided  automobiles  used  by  the  more  ex- 
pensive florists — and  in  the  back  seat  Mr. 
Reeves,  himself  a  ruddy  orchid,  smoking  a  fat 
cigar. 

Mr.  Reeves  plays  himself  on  the  stage,  and 
his  characteristic  device  is  that  of  talking 
across  the  footlights  about  his  company  to  the 
audience.  No  Oriental  potentate  in  his  seraglio 

[   318   ] 


On  the  Bowery  Again 


wields  a  higher  hand  than  he,  and  subcome- 
dians  and  patient  nymphs  must  "stand"  for 
anything  that  will  get  a  laugh.  "  Don't  applaud 
that  man  so  much,"  he  will  interrupt,  "or 
he'll  want  a  raise.  I'm  paying  him  union 
wages  already — nineteen  dollars  a  week!"  Or, 
"Now  give  Miss  Crawford  over  there  a 
chance.  She's  a  good,  clever  girl  and  worth  all 
I  pay  her."  And  when  the  hapless  young 
wroman  has  sung  her  song,  he  will  solemnly 
apologize:  "She  usually  does  better  than 
that.  She'll  have  to  take  her  clothes  out  of  my 
trunk  if  she  don't  improve."  I  have  seen  Mr. 
Reeves  grab  one  of  his  singers  by  the  throat 
and  give  a  lifelike  imitation  of  choking  her 
until  she  gurgled,  "Hey,  let  up!  I've  got  a  sore 
throat,"  while  a  subcomedian,  looking  on  with 
every  appearance  of  surprised  concern,  in- 
formed the  delighted  audience  in  an  aside  that 
''There's  a  lot  of  things  on  the  stage  you  think 
are  only  acting  and  they're  real,  after  all." 

"Al  Reeves,"  I  began- 

Mr.  Watson  dismissed  his  rival  with  a  wave 

of  the  hand.  "That  rough  stuff '11  go  with  a 

stag  crowd  but  not  with  a  general  audience. 

He's  no  comedian.  I  am — that's  the  difference. 

[  219  ] 


Second  Nights 


I've  got  a  lot  of  imitators,  but  they're  only  so 
in  name — not  in  comedy.  Just  built  the  Or- 
pheum  in  Paterson — cost  me  a  hundred  and 
thirty  thousand  dollars.  I  clean  up  about 
thirty  thousand  a  year  out  of  this  show.  That 
ain't  so  bad  for  a  bum  German  comedian!" 
Mr.  Watson  grinned  and,  with  an  air  of  one 
to  whom  advertising  is  no  object — indeed, 
why  should  it  be  if,  without  it,  your  audience 
appears  twice  a  day  as  certain  as  the  sun- 
pushed  toward  the  box-office. 

Here,  from  his  examination  of  the  record  of 
receipts,  he  was  recalled  to  the  fact  that  the 
insatiable  hound  of  the  hungry  public  still 
hung  to  the  trail. 

"Look  here,"  said  Mr.  Watson.  "Get '  Vari- 
ties'  for  January.  They  give  me  a  two-column 
'reader' — that'll  give  you  all  you  want.  Or— 
here,  wait  a  minute."  He  took  out  his  fountain 
pen  and  scribbled  on  a  sheet  of  the  house  let- 
ter-paper the  following  telegraphic  summary 
of  his  life : 

Thirtieth  year  in  burlesque  went  in  the  show  works 
in  Chatham  Square  Museum  at  $6  per  week  and  today 
is  to  Burlesque  what  Drew  is  to  the  $2  houses.  No  Sal- 
ary could  be  figured  on  for  the  Original  in  the  Burlesque 

22° 


On  the  Bowery  Again 


Circuit.  Inherits  his  comedy  from  his  mother  who  causes 
just  as  much  Laughter  at  the  meals  Home  that  Billy 
causes  in  the  back  of  the  footlights.  Going  to  Europe 
this  Summer  for  really  his  first  Vacation  abroad  while 
over  will  look  up  Foreign  Ideas.  Krausmeyer's  Alley  is 
to  Burlesque  what  Uncle  Tom  is  to  the  Children  or  The 
Old  Homestead  was  to  the  Public.  Mr.  W.  is  a  Young 
Man  of  47  and  has  made  perhaps  near  3/2  Million  Dol- 
lars in  the  popular  Price  Houses. 

"There,"  said  Mr.  Watson,  "dope  it  out 
any  way  you  like.  I  got  to  go  an'  eat."  The 
glowering  brow  of  the  capsicum  lady,  waiting 
near  by  for  her  chief,  made  further  parley  inop- 
portune, and  there  was  only  time  to  venture  a 
word  as  to  whether  in  selecting  the  Beef  Trust 
Beauties  any  weight  limit  or  other  minimum 
qualification  was  observed.  "He  hires  'em  by 
the  pound — on  the  hoof,"  a  rival  press-agent 
had  airily  explained. 

"They  all  weigh  about  a  hundred  and 
ninety,"  said  Mr.  Watson,  and,  raising  an 
umbrella  over  his  fair  companion,  disappeared 
in  the  rain. 

Shows    like    "Krausmeyer's    Alley"    will 

doubtless  soon  be  no  more.   Pale  wraiths  of 

musical  comedy  are  continually  crossing  these 

once-scornful  frontiers  and  moving  pictures 

[  221  ] 


Second  Nights 


flicker  where  once  the  slap-stick  rang.  The 
Bowery  is  not  what  it  used  to  be  when  it 
was  full  of  shooting-galleries  and  sailors  and 
strong-arm  men  and  poor  girls  drank  carbolic 
on  the  dance-floor  at  McGuirk's;  nor  is  bur- 
lesque what  it  was  when,  on  a  summer  even- 
ing? you  could  hear  the  chorus  at  Tony 
Pastor's  through  the  open  windows  of  Tam- 
many Hall;  when  Annie  Yeamans  was  singing 
"Maggie  Murphy's  Home,"  and  Lillian  Rus- 
sell was  a  girl. 

Yet  these  post-Elizabethans  die  hard,  as 
some  of  the  foregoing  remarks  may  have  sug- 
gested, and  a  blind-folded  ancient  might  still 
be  taken  to  Miner's  Bowery  of  a  winter  night 
and  fancy  he  smelled  the  smoke  and  heard  the 
band  and  songs  of  thirty  years  ago.  The  orig- 
inal theatre  was  built  in  '78,  and  the  first 
Miner  became  a  great  man  out  of  it  and  wore 
a  top-hat  and  went  to  Congress,  and  his  sons 
continue  the  traditions  of  their  sire. 

Here  you  will  find  that  friendly,  paternal 
relation  between  manager  and  public  which 
has  disappeared  from  the  cold  business  houses 
up-town.  The  audience  itself  takes  part  in 
the  fun,  and  the  head  of  the  theatre  shows 
[  222  ] 


On  the  Bowery  Again 


himself  on  the  stage,  monarch  of  all  he  sur- 
veys, half  Santa  Claus,  half  Solomon. 

On  waltz-contest  night,  when  any  young 
man  may  step  up  on  the  stage,  pick  his  nymph 
from  the  chorus  and  waltz  her  around  to  music 
played  for  them  alone,  it  is  the  manager  who 
sits  in  judgment,  weighs  with  impartial  ear  the 
wild  applause  and  decides  whether  the  dia- 
mond ring  shall  go  to  the  tall  youth  whose  ele- 
gance in  holding  his  partner  with  thumb  and 
forefinger  just  touching  her  back,  other  fin- 
gers extended — as  if  she  were  a  teacup — has 
aroused  universal  admiration,  or  to  the  Adams 
Express  boy  who  waltzes  well,  but  appears  a 
trifle  too  confident,  to  presume  a  bit  on  the 
popularity  of  his  blue  coat  and  brass  but- 
tons. 

He  decides  the  wrestling-bouts — here  again 
is  a  chance  for  any  one  in  the  audience — and 
the  cabaret  contest,  a  modern  diversion  con- 
ducted by  dashing  young  scouts  sent  down  by 
the  music  publishers  to  sing  their  new  songs. 
On  "Country  Store  Night"  he  calls  out  the 
prize-winners— "for  Mrs.  Flossie  Spielberg,  i 
wash-boiler,  i  dozen  photographs  at  the  Man- 
hattan studio,  2  cans  chloride  of  lime  and  a 
[  223  ] 


Second  Nights 


lace  waist;  for  Mrs.  O.  W.  Elfenbein,  #5  worth 
of  dental  work,  a  mattress,  6  cans  of  Fairy 
salmon,  and  a  live  goat."  There  is  something  of 
the  old-time  flavor  about  Country  Store  Night 
— everything  must  be  carried  away  by  the 
prize-winners  themselves — they  have  even  had 
a  horse  on  the  stage,  which  the  new  owner  had 
to  lead  out  the  side  aisle  to  the  cheers  of  the 
audience. 

You  may  complain  with  the  more  knowing 
— who,  dismal  souls,  can  accept  nothing  at  its 
face  value — that  the  impossibility  of  keeping 
up  a  supply  of  genuine  amateurs  has  taken 
the  edge  off  Amateur  Night,  but  you  will  have 
no  lack  of  excitement  if  you  are  one  of  the 
victims  themselves.  It  isn't  so  easy  to  face 
the  Amateur  Night  audience — even  if  you  are 
a  professional  amateur  and  come  from  an 
agency  and  have  a  circuit  of  Amateur  Nights 
—a  dollar  apiece  and  car-fare — and  sing  at 
third-rate  cabarets  and  moving-picture  shows 
between  times.  The  burlesque  audience  is 
quick  and  critical,  and  they've  already  seen 
one  show  before  you  come  on.  They  have 
looked  on  for  three  hours,  clapped  and  sung 
and  whistled  and  smoked  themselves  blue  in 
[  224  ] 


On  the  Bowery  Again 


the  face,  and  now  it's  eleven  o'clock  and  their 
turn. 

You  can  see  them  out  in  front,  grinning 
through  the  smoke,  ready  to  howl  if  they 
don't  like  your  looks  or  your  first  note  is 
"blue"  or  your  stuff  is  old  or  slow—  "think 
of  a  guy  tryin'  to  put  over  a  monologue  at 
this  time  o'  night!"  Of  course,  they're  sup- 
posed to  give  you  a  run  for  your  money,  and 
Mr.  Tom  Miner  himself,  bored  as  a  prize- 
fight referee  or  the  Monte  Carlo  croupier  of 
story,  sits  just  outside  the  prompt-entrance 
with  his  eagle  eye  on  the  house  and  his  own 
hungry  stage-hands. 

But  the  man  with  the  hook — a  huge  sort 
of  landing-net  without  the  net — is  champing 
the  bit  in  the  wings  across  the  way;  the  stage- 
hands, with  blank-cartridge  revolvers,  are 
peering  through  the  back  drop,  and  they  have 
a  reputation  to  support.  There  is  one  in  Brook- 
lyn known  for  his  black-and-blue  spots  all 
over  the  five  boroughs,  and  one  on  the  Bowery 
whose  pride  it  is  that  no  amateur  breathes 
he  cannot  put  off.  Sometimes  they  let  a  man 
down  from  the  flies,  to  disappear  with  the 
hapless  performer  like  the  condor  of  the  An- 
[  225  ] 


Second  Nights 


des,  and  sometimes  a  practical  trap-door  is 
painted  on  the  back  drop  and  the  victim  shot 
through  it  to  the  mattress  behind. 

They  have  given  this  up  at  Miner's  as  un- 
necessarily painful  to  the  artist's  feelings,  and 
the  hook,  which  used  to  be  a  sort  of  shep- 
herd's crook,  was  modified  to  a  hoop  after  they 
caught  a  negro  just  under  the  ears  one  night 
and  choked  him  gray  before  they  could  saw 
it  off.  They  are  very  gentle  at  Miner's,  so  all 
agree;  and  the  crowd  will  give  you  a  chance 
of  a  sort;  but  it's  something  like  the  chance 
in  a  street  fight — you  must  knock  '  em  down 
first. 

And  it  was  pretty  to  see  Number  i  do  it— 
a  pale  youth,  blase,  true  child  of  the  pave- 
ment, who  strolled  out  to  the  footlights  and 
turned  on  one  of  those  bullet-proof,  sweet, 
nasal  tenors  with  a  lyric  tremor  that  went 
straight  to  the  crowd's  heart: 

"Like  the  roses  need  their  fragrance 

Like  the  sweetheart  needs  a  kiss " 


Calm,  hands  limp  at  his  sides,  he  sent  the 
whining,  skylark  note  soaring  above  the 
smoke  as  the  man  with  the  bit  of  tin  between 

[  226  ] 


On  the  Bowery  Again 


his  teeth  sends  his  whistle  above  the  roar  of 
the  street: 

"Like  a  broken  heart  needs  gladness, 

Like  the  flowers  need  the  dew, 
Like  a  ba-a-a-by  needs  ...  its  mother, 
THAT'S  ...  how  I  need  you!" 

The  house,  barking  for  slaughter  a  moment 
before,  was  still  as  a  mouse.  He  sang  all  there 
was  to  sing  and  came  back  for  an  encore 
before  they  would  let  him  go. 

The  next,  a  clog- dancer,  had  scarcely 
started  his  shuffle,  with  a  fatal  glance  of  in- 
decision at  his  jury,  before  there  came  a  uni- 
versal "WOW!"  and  off  he  went  on  the  hook 
-likewise  two  velvet -eyed  Italian  guitar 
players  who  fled  at  the  first  hoot  like  startled 
fawns. 

Number  4,  a  sturdy,  sawed-off  little  girl, 
Italian  or  Slav,  it  was  hard  to  tell  which,  like 
thousands  who  go  pouring  down  into  the 
East  Side  when  the  loft  buildings  close,  stood 
watching  all  this.  She  was  a  veritable  ama- 
teur, very  different  from  the  "flip"  young 
girls  from  the  cabarets,  and  had  a  curious  old 
duenna  with  her.  There  was  a  jeer  as  she 
[  227  ] 


Second  Nights 


waddled  on — looking  as  if  she  had  been  put 
in  a  vice  and  flattened  by  having  a  weight 
pushed  down  on  her  head — and  it  broke  into 
a  roar  when  she  hit  her  first  note  flat.  From 
the  wings  we  could  see  her  mouth  moving 
and  the  leader  waving  his  violin  and  trying 
to  follow,  but  the  crowd  drowned  out  her 
voice.  No  blushes  or  gaspings  from  this  little 
flat-headed  girl,  however.  She  faced  them  as 
so  many  of  her  sisters  face  life,  unhopeful, 
unsurprised,  sullen,  and  unafraid.  At  last 
something  like  annoyance  crossed  her  face 
and  she  started  off. 

'They  ain't  going  to  pull  no  hook  on  me!" 
she  muttered. 

"Go  on  back,  kid!"  whispered  the  stage- 
manager.  "They'll  treat  you  right." 

"I  won't  have  no  hook  pulled  on  me,"  she 
repeated,  trying  to  push  through,  but  he  urged 
her  on  again,  and  Tom  Miner  himself  rose  and 
put  out  his  hand.  "You  give  this  little  girl  a 
chance,"  he  shouted.  "Yes,  I  mean  you  up 
there  in  the  box.  Another  word  and  out  you 
go.  Give  her  a  chance — she  can  sing  all  right." 

The  house  quieted  and  she  started  again, 
but  hit  it  worse  this  time  than  before.  She 
[  228  ] 


On  the  Bowery  Again 


gave  it  up  then,  still  defiant.  "He's  playing 
too  low,"  she  snapped.  "Nobody  could  sing 
to  that!" 

You  might  have  thought  nothing  could  hold 
that  howling  mob;  and  then  a  boy  with  a 
violin  stepped  out  and  showed  how.  He  was 
a  scrubby  little  Hebrew,  about  seventeen,  with 
no  collar,  and  the  sweat  dripping  off  the  end 
of  his  nose  as  he  played,  a  self-absorbed,  pains- 
taking little  man  who  played  just  as  the  other 
youth  had  sung  and  could  tuck  his  instrument 
under  his  shabby  chin  and  slowly,  surely,  with 
the  same  tremulous  resonance  and  sirupy 
slurs,  make  it  soar  and  sing.  They  called  him 
back  and  threw  dimes  and  nickels  on  the 
stage,  and  he  picked  them  up  carefully  and 
walked  off,  as  he  played,  without  a  smile. 
He  had  a  job  in  a  hotel  orchestra  but  didn't 
intend  to  stick  there,  he  told  me,  as  he  wiped 
his  streaming  forehead  on  his  sleeve. 

There  was  a  bookish-looking  young  man, 
older  than  the  rest,  who  tried  to  sing,  but 
retired  before  a  bombardment  of  blank  car- 
tridges— still  grave  and  serene.  He  was  a  sub- 
urban chicken  farmer  with  a  zeal  to  shine  in 
other  spheres  which  brought  him  here  when- 
[  229  ] 


Second  Nights 


ever  they  would  let  him  go  on.  Two  or  three 
pert  young  girls  with  enamelled  faces  and  im- 
pudent manners  screeched  successfully  their 
ragtime  songs  and,  as  we  listened,  crowded 
there  in  the  first  entrance,  a  shabby,  long- 
haired youth,  who  might  have  been  an  unsuc- 
cessful inventor,  took  a  battered  paper  from 
his  inside  pocket  and  tapped  it  mysteriously. 
He  was  going  to  do  a  monologue,  but  this 
—this  gem  unrevealed — was  an  eight-part 
sketch. 

"I  play  them  all  myself,"  he  whispered. 
"Go  on  a  young  man — off — turn  round- 
come  back  an  old  man.  See?  Eight  parts— 
and  I  play  'em  all.  They  give  me  a  try-out 
next  week,  and  if  it  gets  over  they'll  put  me 
on  big  time — hey?"  He  managed  just  about 
to  open  his  mouth  before  he  was  hustled  off 
—as  was  a  bashful  young  Italian  who  tried  a 
monologue,  wrapped  up,  Hamlet-like,  in  the 
overcoat  he  had  worn  in  from  the  street.  Then 
a  tall  girl  sang — so  well  that  the  stage-manager 
promptly  offered  her  a  job  with  the  regular 
show. 

"  Don't  say  anything,"  she  whispered  with 
an  odd  smile.  "I've  been  out  with  four  of  'em 
[  230  ] 


On  the  Bowery  Again 


already."  It  was  the  dollar  she  needed — or  the 
smell  of  the  stage  again. 

Back  in  the  dusk,  where  the  idle  scenery 
was  piled,  alone  but  for  the  lean  stage  cat,  sat 
an  amateur  of  another  sort.  No  crowding  into 
the  first  entrance  for  her  along  with  those 
fresh  young  snipes  from  the  cabarets.  She 
knew  her  place  and  stayed  there — in  her  poke 
bonnet,  comic  white  stockings,  and  freakish 
dress  stuck  over  with  playing-cards.  An  old- 
timer  she,  fifty,  perhaps — it's  merely  a  matter 
of  light — "professional"  through  and  through, 
with  one  of  those  well-made,  rather  piquant 
faces  which  the  years  pass  over  untouched. 
A  little  rouge,  a  few  blond  curls,  a  kindly  up- 
glance  from  the  footlights — it's  almost  good 
as  new. 

Hers  was  a  "suffragette  act"  in  which  she 
made  a  humorous  argument  for  the  cause.  "It 
goes  pretty  well  in  the  cabarets  and  the  ladies 
crowd  round  sometimes  and  talk  to  me."  It 
wasn't  hard  to  guess  about  how  much  chance 
they  would  give  it  here!  But  you  get  your 
dollar  and  car-fare,  there'll  be  another  Ama- 
teur Night  in  Brooklyn  next  Wednesday  and  a 
chance  at  cabarets  between  times,  not  to  men- 
[  231  ] 


Second  Nights 


tion  music  lessons,  and  there  are  hall  bed- 
rooms with  board,  at  five  or  six  dollars  a  week. 
She  should  worry,  indeed,  as  they  say-,  even 
though  she  was  an  old-timer  and  had  played 
at  the  head  of  her  own  show. 

The  audience  howled  at  the  mere  sight  of 
her;  and  for  a  time  she  fought  back  with 
every  trick  she  knew,  and  such  shrieks  and 
creaky  coquetries  and  comic  hand  wavings 
and  kicks  and  tippings  of  her  bonnet  here  and 
there  as  none  of  those  who  had  gone  before  her 
could  learn  in  a  dozen  years.  No  use;  they 
wouldn't  stand  it,  although  in  the  glare  of 
the  footlights  she  looked  almost  young,  and 
so  after  a  little  she  bowed  herself  with  a  final 
comic  rearward  kick  and  hurried  in  business- 
like fashion  to  the  dressing-room. 

She  was  a  delightful  old  lady,  glad  to  be 
talked  to,  ready  to  listen  and  laugh  and  to  put 
her  hand  on  your  arm  and  tell  the  story  of  her 
life  ten  minutes  after  you  met  her.  She  had 
played  in  burlesque  and  light  opera  with  all 
the  well-known  people  of  a  generation  ago — or 
in  the  kindly  haze  of  memory  it  seemed  that 
she  had — and  had  three  or  four  husbands  more 
or  less.  There  was  the  minstrel  she  ran  away 
[  232  ] 


On  the  Bowery  Again 


with  at  sixteen—  "and  my  mother  came  after 
me  and  brought  me  back  and  put  me  in  the 
school  again"— and  the  bass  in  light  opera, 
and  the  manager  who  fell  into  a  fortune  and 
began  such  a  wild  career  that  she  was  glad 
enough  to  get  away  from  him.  "I'm  living  in 
a  hall  bedroom  now,  over  in  West  Twenty- 
sixth  Street,  and,  do  you  know,"  she  beamed, 
"I'm  happier  than  I  ever  was  in  my  life." 
She  didn't  line  up  with  the  rest  when,  as  the 
prizes  were  held  over  each  one's  head,  the 
audience  declared  the  winners  by  its  applause. 
"Let  the  young  folks  have  'em,"  she  winked. 
Suit  case  by  her  side,  she  waited  patiently  for 
her  dollar,  and  then  alone  and  smiling  started 
for  her  up-town  car.  "I've  got  three  music 
lessons  to-morrow,"  she  giggled  as  we  helped 
her  aboard,  "two  of  'em  in  Hoboken!  Good 
night — good  luck,"  and  disappeared  in  the 
queer  old  town. 

The  Bowery  seemed  genial  enough  that 
night,  if  not  what  it  was  of  old.  Even  the  stage- 
manager  differed  from  the  ogres  of  story,  and 
listened,  a  sort  of  philosophic  uncle,  to  the 
tales  the  hard-worked  chorus  told,  as  they 
hooked  up  each  other's  waists,  of  last  week's 

[  233  ] 


Second  Nights 


adventures  or  what  they  had  had  for  sup- 
per. The  Hebrew  comedian  was  actually  funny 
and  lived  just  round  the  corner  when  at  home. 
His  mother  and  brother  still  kept  there  the 
family  store  from  which  he  had  fled  some 
eight  years  since  to  join  a  stock  company  in 
Perth  Amboy.  He  was  only  twenty-three  now 
and  getting  a  hundred  dollars  a  week,  and  he 
worked  for  it  every  minute.  He  didn't  even 
brag  of  what  he  could  do  to  Broadway.  "I 
had  a  couple  of  offers,"  he  said,  "but  I'd 
rather  stick  to  burlesque  for  a  few  years 
more— I  want  to  smooth  off  the  rough  edges 
first." 

The  soubrette  had  also  grown  up  on  the 
upper  East  Side — a  husky,  hearty  little  girl 
with  big  blue  eyes  and  a  wide,  boyish  mouth, 
fresh  as  the  flowers  of  May.  She  sat  still  as  a 
mouse  while  her  picture  was  made,  thought  it 
must  be  wonderful  to  draw  like  that,  and  that 
Raleigh  had  his  nerve  with  him  to  make  her  so 
pretty.  Nor  did  she  seem  to  be  bothering  about 
having  her  name  in  electric  lights  on  Broad- 
way. She  had  gone  on  in  the  chorus  in  a  couple 
of  up-town  musical  comedies,  she  said,  but  she 
was  glad  to  get  back  to  burlesque  again.  A 
[  234  ] 


On  the  Bowery  Again 


musical  comedy  might  rehearse  for  six  weeks 
and  blow  up  like  a  soap-bubble,  but  a  bur- 
lesque show  was  thrown  together  in  no  time 
and  there  were  thirty-five  or  forty  weeks  sure. 
"Mr.  Miner  knows  me,  and  all  the  house  man- 
agers on  the  circuit.  It's  like  getting  back 
home,"  she  said. 

And,  of  course,  this — the  steadiness  of  it- 
is  one  of  the  compensations  of  burlesque.  It 
helps  to  make  up  for  shabby  dressing-rooms, 
the  comedian's  personalities,  and  the  two- 
performance  grind.  There  are  no  motor-cars 
panting  at  the  stage  entrance  when  the  show 
is  over,  no  dashing  young  financiers  in  eve- 
ning clothes,  but  the  job  is  there,  at  any  rate, 
and  will  be  to-morrow  and  next  spring.  The 
weary  chorus  girls  can  take  it  home  with  them 
to  their  boarding-houses  and  cheap  hotels,  and 
with  the  thought  of  it  even  the  leading  lady 
can  solace  herself,  as,  lingering  for  a  few 
friendly  glasses  of  beer  with  the  orchestra 
leader  and  his  wife  and  the  man  who  wants 
to  engage  her  at  bargain  wages  for  the  sum- 
mer, she  recounts  the  machinations  of  the 
soubrette  and  how  much  worse  she  is  treated 
in  this  show  than  ever  before. 

[  235  1 


XI 
JOHN    BULL   DISTURBED 


BETWEEN  the  point  at  which  a  foreign  in- 
vader would  land  on  our  coast  and  the  nearest 
jumping-off  place  into  the  opposite  ocean  is 
some  three  thousand  miles.  From  London  in 
the  east  to  Bristol  Channel  on  the  west  of  En- 
gland is  a  trifle  over  a  hundred  miles,  and  from 
the  county  of  Essex,  where  a  German  force 
would  be  likely  to  land,  to  the  farthest  point 
of  refuge  in  the  north  of  Scotland  is  only  about 
five  hundred  miles  —  a  mere  pleasure  stroll  for 
our  friend  Mr.  E.  P.  Weston.  After  feeling  the 
creepy  spell  which  Major  du  Manner's  picture 
of  a  German  invasion  exerted  in  New  York, 
with  the  Atlantic  Ocean  between  us  and  the 
nearest  possible  raider,  it  was  not  difficult 
to  understand  how  it  turned  England  upside 
down. 

There  had  been,  in  the  first  place,  a  post- 
men's and  telegraphers'  strike,  so  that  no  news 
had  circulated  for  days.  For  days,  too,  the 
south  of  England  had  been  enveloped  in  an 

[236] 


John  Bull  Disturbed 


impenetrable  fog.  Stodgy  old  beef-eating  Mr. 
Brown  (of  Myrtle  Villa,  Wickham,  Essex, 
which,  as  you  may  recall,  faces  the  North 
Sea  just  to  the  east  of  London)  was  indignant 
at  its  continuance.  "If  the  Government  had 
taken  the  matter  in  hand — that  is  to  say,  if— 
if  steps  had  been  taken — I  venture  to  say— 
"You  mean,  governor,"  grinned  that  flippant 
young  clerk,  Geoffrey  Smith,  "they'd  have 
raised  a  wind."  Mr.  Brown  stumped  across 
the  room,  crumpling  his  newspaper  and 
grumbling.  "You've  caught  my  meaning,  I 
dare  say,  Geoffrey,"  he  growled,  "and  ex- 
pressed it  in  your  own  words." 

The  first  act  admits  us  to  the  bosom  of  this 
typical  Smith- Jones-Robinson  British  family. 
They  are  in  the  play  room.  Bulldoggy  Mr. 
Brown  is  busy  with  diablo.  Syd,  the  youngest 
son,  in  a  black-and-red  blazer,  criticises  his 
father's  "form"  and  reads  from  several  author- 
ities on  the  subject.  The  old  gentleman  de- 
fends his  method  of  holding  the  left  elbow 
glued  to  the  hip,  the  right  palm  grasping  the 
stick  midway,  etc.,  etc.,  even  to  the  length  of 
quoting  from  a  letter  in  the  Times  on  this 
vital  question  by  an  ex-cabinet  minister.  The 

[  237  ] 


Second  Nights 


youth  retorts  that  it's  all  very  well  if  that's 
what  he  wants  to  do,  but  he'll  never  get  any 
style.  Reggie,  with  the  spectacles,  is  working 
over  this  week's  limerick  contest;  the  eldest 
daughter  is  knitting;  Amy  and  her  near- 
sighted, lisping  friend,  Ada,  from  over  the 
way,  are  enjoying  the  description  of  yester- 
day's football  match  as  read  from  the  sporting 
page  by  the  slangy  Smith. 

Young  Smith  is  one  of  that  army — not  un- 
known in  this  country — who  follow  the  sports 
which  occupy  so  much  of  their  energies  by 
shouting  themselves  hoarse  at  games  and 
reading  about  them  in  next  morning's  papers. 
When  Paul  Robinson,  one  of  the  local  Volun- 
teers, enters  in  his  khaki  uniform,  it  is  Smith 
who  leads  in  ridiculing  him.  A  rotten  bad  way 
of  spending  one's  time,  this  lying  down  in  the 
mud  and  shooting  at  a  mark — if  he  were  going 
to  shoot  he'd  at  least  shoot  at  something  alive; 
it  would  be  more  sporting.  And  Ada  recalls 
that  her  brother  shot  two  gulls  last  summer 
and  one  of  them  was  flying.  As  for  these  John- 
nies who  are  gassing  about  defending  the  coun- 
try and  all  that  sort  of  rot,  let  'em  tell  him 
what  they  do  in  working  hours.  lie  works  hard 
[  238  ] 


John  Bull  Disturbed 


nine  hours  a  day  and  every  day,  looking  at  a 
blotter  or  out  at  a  dirty  wall  covered  with  ad- 
vertisements about  tours  to  the  land  of  the 
midnight  sun.  When  he  gets  off  he  wants  to 
have  a  bit  of  fun,  and  he'll  jolly  well  see  that 
he  gets  it.  That  reminds  him — how  he  went 
out  and  got  good  and  blind-o  last  Mafeking 
day  and  sang  "Rule  Britannia"  from  the  edge 
of  the  fountain  in  Trafalgar  Square  and  fell  in 
and  kissed  the  policeman  who  pulled  him  out 
and  ran  him  in.  And  Amy  and  Ada  giggle 
admiringly. 

Even  Mr.  Brown,  when  appealed  to  by 
the  young  militiaman,  suggests  there's  danger 
this  volunteer  business  will  encourage  a  spirit 
of  militarism,  from  which,  thank  Heaven,  En- 
gland has  thus  far  been  free.  The  talk  of  inva- 
sion is  absurd.  He  has  no  patience  with  it— 
none  whatever.  The  heart  of  the  country  is 
sound,  as  any  invader  will  find  to  his  cost,  and 
were  these  foreign  scoundrels  to  land,  every 
loyal  Englishman  would  rush  to  arms  and 
—and—  "How,"  asks  the  innocent  daughter 
from  her  knitting,  "how,  papa,  does  one  rush 
to  arms?" 

And  just  about  this  time — after  the  deftest 

[  239  ] 


Second  Nights 


building-up  of  domestic  atmosphere  and,  in 
view  of  what  is  to  come,  almost  tragic  satire 
on  British  complacency — little  Syd,  looking 
out  the  window,  wants  to  know  who  all  those 
Johnnies  are  in  the  garden! 

Mr.  Brown,  furious  at  this  trespassing  on 
the  precincts  of  an  Englishman's  castle,  rushes 
to  the  side  door,  "Hey,  there!  What  do  you 
mean  by  this  impudence!  What's  that?  I  can't 
understand  you.  Come  here — here — right  in 
here!"  And  in  marches,  at  a  brisk,  businesslike 
stride,  a  soldier  in  service  uniform.  Mud  spat- 
tered on  his  khaki,  spurs  rattling,  a  wonderful 
air  of  preparedness  and  efficiency.  "Who  are 
you?"  stammers  the  volunteer,  scrutinizing 
the  uniform  so  like  his  own. 

There  is  much  violence  and  excitement 
later,  but  I  doubt  if  anything  more  creepily 
impressive  than  the  sudden  materialization  of 
this  sinister  figure  out  of  the  fog  and  the  first 
rasp  of  the  German  accent  as  the  stranger  an- 
swers evasively,  "How  ar-r-re  you,  comrade!" 
whips  out  a  note-book,  and  with  the  cold  as- 
surance of  a  man  who  has  no  time  to  waste 
fires  a  few  staccato  questions  and  scribbles 
down  the  answers. 

[  240  ] 


John  Bull  Disturbed 


In  the  next  act  the  play  room  has  been 
turned  into  a  military  headquarters.  Orderlies 
bustle  in  and  out,  saluting  and  clicking  their 
heels.  A  field  telegrapher  is  clicking  off  mes- 
sages in  code.  The  commanding  officer,  at  a 
table,  studies  his  map  and  puffs  a  cigar,  as 
commanding  officers  do  in  plays.  Once,  trying 
to  recall  the  identity  of  a  fellow  officer,  he  runs 
over  his  note-book.  "Ah,  yes,"  he  rumbles  cas- 
ually; "he  was  a  head  waiter  in  a  hotel  at 
Strasburg."  The  flippant  Smith,  a  bit  soiled 
but  still  incorrigible  after  a  night's  detention 
in  the  scullery,  is  brought  before  him. 

"Don't  you  see,"  he  protests,  with  wholly 
unconscious  irony,  "I'm  not  a  soldier?  7  don't 
want  to  fight!  I'm  a  spectator!  I'm  only  one  of 
the  crowd." 

The  young  man  complains  against  the  un- 
warranted attack.  "If  our  fellows  invaded 
your  country  they  wouldn't  go  and  attack  a 
lot  of  harmless  citizens." 

The  officer  smiles  a  lofty  imperial  smile. 
"In  my  country,"  he  rumbles,  "there  are  no 
har-r-rmless  citizens!" 

The  Germans  retire  presently,  and  the  local 
militia,  with  rakish  turned-up  hats,  handker- 

[  241  ] 


Second  Nights 


chiefs  in  their  cuffs,  come  rollicking  in.  Their 
business  is  to  make  the  house  a  defensive  posi- 
tion. Lieutenant  Jackson,  assigned  to  the  up- 
per story,  wants  to  know  how  you  do  that. 

"Roll  the  furniture  against  the  doors,  I  sup- 
pose, and  all  that  sort  of  thing — what?" 

'The  aw — aw — the  usual  thing,"  sputters 
his  rattled  captain.  "It's  all  in  the  book." 

They  don't  know  how  to  shoot.  They  have 
no  range-finders,  no  doctors,  no  stretchers. 
One  man  is  wounded  by  shrapnel  and  nobody 
knows  what  to  do  with  him.  Everybody  is  look- 
ing for  orders  and  nobody  knows  how  to  give 
them — nobody  except  the  color-sergeant,  a  re- 
gular attached  for  the  time  being  to  the  Ter- 
ritorials, and  adoctor  who  happens  in.  The  girls 
try  to  help  the  wounded  man,  but  the  doctor 
sends  even  them  away.  They  don't  know  how 
to  do  anything.  Then  the  attack  on  the  house 
begins.  The  young  clerk,  thinking  only  that  he 
may  be  able  to  cut  the  office  for  a  few  days, 
and  jubilant  that  the  real  show  is  about  to 
start,  hops  on  a  table  to  get  a  better  view.  The 
first  shot  breaks  the  mirror  behind  him. 

'That  takes  me  off!"  is  his  jocular  shout. 
At  the  next  shot  he  drops  to  his  knees,  falls 
[  242  ] 


John  Bull  Disturbed 


limply  off  the  table,  and  rolls  over,  face  up,  in 
the  glare  of  the  footlights.  And  down  goes  the 
second  curtain. 

The  third  act  continues  with  startling  real- 
ism the  attack  on  the  house,  ending  with  the  re- 
tirement of  everybody  but  Brown  himself,  who, 
although  he  doesn't  know  how  to  fire  a  gun, 
is  determined  to  stay  and  prove  that  his  home 
is  his  castle.  He  fumbles  with  a  rifle,  which  is 
discharged,  and  a  mirror  comes  crashing  down; 
but  at  last,  just  before  the  enemy  rush  in,  he 
succeeds  in  bringing  one  of  them  down.  He  is 
promptly  disarmed  and  shot.  As  a  civilian  he 
had  no  right  to  defend  even  his  own  home. 

Here  the  play  should  end,  of  course,  but,  as 
a  concession  to  traditional  prejudice,  a  rescu- 
ing party  is  permitted  to  rush  in  and  turn  the 
tables  just  as  the  curtain  goes  down.  This  for- 
tuitous ending  is  not  as  disturbing  as  might  be 
expected.  Major  du  Maurier  satirizes  his  coun- 
trymen with  the  observant  eye  of  a  humorist, 
then  takes  his  perfectly  real  family  up  bodily 
and  plunges  them  into  what,  to  us  at  least, 
must  seem  an  almost  visionary  invasion.  It  is 
as  if  he  said:  "Now  we  will  imagine  that  this 
stage  is  a  submarine  boat.  If  the  Browns  are 

[  243  1 


Second  Nights 


so  careless,  fancy  what  would  happen  if  the 
water  came  in."  We  are  duly  horrified  when 
the  water  comes  in — only  we  know  it  isn't 
really  water.  And  if  the  Browns  hop  up  from 
the  carpet  and  declare  that  they  aren't  really 
drowned,  only  an  unusually  scrupulous  con- 
science would  insist  on  assuring  them  that 
they  were. 

March,  1909. 


[  244  ] 


XII 
BY    MR.    BELASCO 


IN  a  recent  interview  —  we  have  returned  for 
the  moment  to  the  year  1905  —  Mrs.  Leslie 
Carter  said  that  her  new  play,  "Adrea,"  re- 
minded her  of  Barnum's  circus.  Mrs.  Carter 
did  not  intend  to  disparage  Mr.  Belasco  by 
this  comparison  —  merely  that  "Adrea"  was  so 
many-sided  that  it  was  as  impossible  to  grasp 
it  at  once  as  to  assimilate  the  details  of  a 
three-ring  show. 

There  was  much  in  what  Mrs.  Carter  said. 
Adrea  is  a  blind  princess  whom  a  jealous  sister 
marries  off  to  the  court  jester,  a  sort  of  dog- 
faced  boy  with  red  stripes  across  his  counte- 
nance. .  .  .  Many  things  happen  after  that. 
You  might  be  able  to  understand  them  if  it 
weren't  for  the  fact  that  just  as  you  think  you 
do,  in  come  a  lot  of  barbarian  soldiers  or  black 
slaves  or  senators,  vestal  virgins,  wantons,  or 
another  dog-faced  man  with  Thracian  wild 
horses.  There  is  much  sound  and  fury,  flashes 
of  sunlight,  queer  music,  mysterious  voices 

[  245  ] 


Second  Nights 


calling  in  the  distance,  and  all  the  atmospheric 
sleight  of  hand  which  have  given  Mr.  Belasco 
fame. 

Through  all  this  dazzling  hodgepodge  are 
interspersed  "situations" —you  can  see  him 
sitting  before  a  row  of  pigeonholes,  so  to 
speak,  dipping  into  them  in  turn.  Now  we 
get  the  odd  numbers,  1-3-5-7,  now  2-4-6-8, 
tacked  up  and  set  off  as  you  would  tack  a  pin- 
wheel  to  a  post,  and  blazing  and  fizzing  out 
as  dazzlingly  and  completely.  No  wonder 
Mrs.  Carter  said  that  "Adrea"  takes  in  "all 
the  emotions  that  have  existed  in  the  past, 
exist  to-day,  or  will  exist  in  the  future."  Here 
they  are  and  with  about  as  much  organic  re- 
lation as  so  many  words  in  the  dictionary. 
One  can  smile  at  the  artificiality  of  tank 
drama,  but  Mr.  Belasco  is  assumed  to  be 
serious,  living  in  a  purple  artistic  haze.  And 
it  is  difficult  to  forgive  faking  done  in  the 
name  of  art,  to  view  all  this  mouthing  and 
mugging  with  equanimity. 

February,  1905. 

Every  one  should  be  entertained  by  "The 
Girl   of  the   Golden   West."   The  liking  for 
[  246  ] 


By  Mr.  Belasco 


melodrama  is  as  innate  as  that  for  the  circus; 
and  just  as  the  circus,  when  taken  from  canvas 
to  the  Hippodrome,  still  holds  its  appeal,  so 
one  welcomes  "Arietta,  the  Wild  Girl  of  the 
Sierras,"  when  she  is  promoted  to  Forty- 
second  Street,  etherealized  with  magic  lights 
and  atmospheres,  and  acted  right  up  to  the 
limit.  Merely  literary  merit  it  would  be  un- 
reasonable to  demand.  Even  here  it  is  only 
occasionally  that  the  bathos  of  the  wizard's 
tricks  disposes  the  spectator  actually  to  tear  his 
hair — when,  for  instance,  the  heroine  lugs  in 
Dante  and  Beatrice  by  pseudo-naive  reference 
to  a  story  she'd  read  "about  a  man  named 
Dant"-— or  such  pseudo-homespun  sentiment 
as  "Thar's  somethin'  kinda  holy  about  love"; 
or  "Love  is  a  kind  of  itchin'  at  yer  heart  what 
ya  can't  scratch." 

Mr.  Belasco  reproduces  what  passes  for  the 
California  of  the  Forty-niners  as  vividly  as  he 
conjured  atmospheres  in  "The  Darling  of  the 
Gods"  and  "Dubarry."  His  skill  here  is  un- 
questioned. It  is  enough  entertainment,  al- 
most, merely  taking  in  the  details  of  his  stage 
pictures;  things  constructed  with  all  the  care 
with  which  music  is  orchestrated,  with  now 

[  247  ] 


Second  Nights 


and  then  some  detached  figure — a  pale-faced, 
snaky  gambler  smoking  a  cigar,  a  serio-comic 
hanger-on  stuffing  his  mouth  with  food  from 
the  other  men's  lunch  pails — balancing  the 
whole,  and,  so  to  say,  accentuating  the  key 
like  the  musician's  pedal-bass. 

Miss  Bates  is  wholesome  and  vigorous  as 
The  Girl,  Mr.  Hilliard  a  dashing  hero.  As  the 
gambler-sheriff,  Mr.  Keenan's  mastery  of  re- 
pose, of  minute  and  subtle  stage  business, 
amounts  to  something  very  like  genius.  He 
lights  a  cigar,  and  the  spectator  watches  the 
match  as  he  would  watch  the  fuse  of  a  dyna- 
mite bomb;  he  comes  in  out  of  a  blizzard,  and, 
standing  motionless  in  the  centre  of  the  stage, 
warms  an  index  finger  by  boring  the  tip  of  it 
into  the  palm  of  his  other  hand,  and  for  some 
mysterious  reason  you  are  thrilled  in  every 
fibre.  We  can  think  of  no  one  who  would  get 
more  out  of  that  ingenious  scene  in  The  Girl's 
house  at  night  when  she  is  trying  to  conceal 
her  wounded  lover.  He  is  hidden  in  the  rafters 
just  over  the  sheriff's  head,  and  the  latter,  un- 
successful in  his  search,  is  about  to  go  out 
again  into  the  storm.  A  drop  of  blood  falls  on 
the  handkerchief  in  his  hand.  In  the  glare  of 

[  248  ] 


By  Mr.  Belasco 


the  spot-light  the  dark  spot  can  be  seen  by 
every  one  in  the  audience.  The  sheriff  slowly 
looks  down,  then  up.  He  is  tall  and  gaunt,  all 
in  black,  face  white  as  death.  His  gaze  fixes 
itself  on  the  rafters  and  then,  in  the  silence, 
on  the  white  handkerchief,  drop — drop — drop 
falls  the  blood.  The  situation  has  the  bite  of 
theatric  genius,  and  Mr.  Keenan  fairly  eats  it 
alive. 

December,  1905. 

Mission  gardens  and  mission  bells,  tinkling 
mandolins,  Spanish  accent,  confetti,  senoritas, 
sunshine,  silken  shawls — all  these  the  "Rose 
of  the  Rancho"  gathers  behind  the  footlights 
into  that  live  picturesqueness  for  which  Mr. 
Belasco  is  celebrated.  Few  places  or  periods 
offer  a  more  engaging  contrast  to  contem- 
porary America  than  the  old  California  of 
the  dying  Spanish  days,  and  without  jam- 
ming tricky  and  purely  accidental  phenomena 
of  local  color  down  one's  throat  he  brings  back 
the  countenance  of  this  banished  time,  and 
much  of  its  feeling,  truly  and  with  charm. 
The  drowsy,  sun-drenched  air  of  the  mission 
garden  is  there  as  well  as  the  good  padre  and 

[  249  ] 


Second  Nights 


the  mission  bells;  sefioritas  and  cigarette-smok- 
ing gallants  talk  Spanish  and  laugh  Spanish 
instead  of  being  merely  glorified  cigar-box 
lids.  There  is  a  really  beautiful  confetti-throw- 
ing scene  which  some  of  our  Latin-Ameri- 
can friends  say  takes  them  straight  back  to 
the  carnival  days  at  home.  There  is  a  com- 
mendable abstinence  from  that  familiar  reach- 
ing out  and  fairly  grabbing  the  applause  of 
the  gullible;  and  the  people  of  the  play— 
except  for  a  somewhat  incorrigible  habit  of 
dropping  on  their  knees  and  being  pictur- 
esquely blessed — behave  with  no  more  ec- 
centricity than  is  traditionally  considered  good 
form  in  melodrama.  Mr.  Belasco  even  eludes 
the  bed  toward  which  he  normally  flies  as  the 
iron  filing  to  the  magnet  in  the  more  acute 
paroxysms  of  his  art.  The  nearest  he  gets  to 
it  is  to  cause  his  shy  heroine  to  tell  her  new 
American  suitor — with  a  peculiarly  Belasco- 
nian  ingenuousness — about  the  bedclothes  and 
lovely  nightgowns  which  are  part  of  the  trous- 
seau of  every  Spanish  bride. 

The  framework  of  the  piece,  written  by  Mr. 
Richard  Walton  Tully,  deals  with  the  clash 
between  the  Spanish  settlers  of  California 

1 250] 


By  Mr.  Belasco 


and  the  gringo  pioneers  who  tried  to  "jump" 
the  lands.  Such  a  "land-jumper"  was  Kin- 
kaid  of  Nebraska,  who,  with  his  gang  of  a 
hundred  ruffians,  was  about  to  seize  the  ranch 
of  Sefiora  Dona  Petrona  Castro,  whose  daugh- 
ter, Juanita,  was  known  as  "the  Rose." 

Young  Mr.  Kearney,  of  Washington,  in 
California  on  government  duty  in  connection 
with  disputed  lands,  had  fallen  in  love  with 
the  young  lady,  and  she  with  him,  and  he  was 
naturally  anxious  to  foil  Kinkaid;  so  he  got 
from  Juanita  the  boundary  papers,  gave  them 
to  a  young  militiaman  named  Sammy,  and 
sent  him  off  to  ride  like  mad  to  the  land-of- 
fice, register  the  claim,  and  return  with  help. 
Meanwhile,  by  pretending  to  join  Kinkaid,  he 
hoped  to  delay  the  eviction  and  the  ruffian- 
ism which  would  follow.  Meanwhile,  also,  the 
fiesta  in  honor  of  Juanita's  approaching  mar- 
riage to  Don  Luis  de  la  Torre,  whom  Juanita 
loathed,  was  celebrated  with  much  confetti, 
guitar  playing,  and  general  gayety.  To  the 
audience  this  scene  is  infused  with  romantic 
irony  and  suspense  because  of  the  fact  that 
Kinkaid's  gang  is  likely  to  smash  into  the 
patio  of  the  ranch-house  at  any  minute,  and 

[  251  ] 


Second  Nights 


because  Juanita,  for  appearance'  sake,  has 
to  go  through  the  betrothal  rites  with  a  man 
she  despises;  and  this  suspense  and  irony  be- 
come, of  course,  something  terrific  when  Kin- 
kaid's  gang  does  burst  in  at  last,  and  gallant 
Mr.  Kearney,  in  order  to  save  Juanita  and 
her  family — My  God,  Sammy!  Why  don't 
you  come! — must  pretend  that  he  has  de- 
ceived Juanita  and  is  going  to  join  Kinkaid 
in  driving  her  family  out.  The  suspense  lasts 
for  an  act  and  a  half — certainly  one  of  the 
longest  cases  on  record — until  Sammy  at  last 
arrives  with  the  trusty  militia  boys,  covered 
with  alkali  dust,  saves  the  day,  and  permits 
Juanita  to  fall  on  the  sturdy  bosom  of  Mr. 
Kearney. 

February,  1907. 

When  the  days  grow  short  and  frosty  and 
folks  come  flocking  back  to  town,  certain 
pictures  awaken  and  float  fondly  across  the 
autumnal  mind — things  one  would  dream  of, 
perhaps,  locked  away  on  some  little  explorer's 
ship  and  frozen  in  the  Arctic  ice.  There  is  the 
brisk  beauty  of  the  avenue,  for  instance,  at 
dusk,  just  as  evening  is  beginning  to  hang  out 
[  252  ] 


By  Mr.  Belasco 


her  first  premonitory  lamps.  There  are  peo- 
ple seated  about  a  dinner-table,  suffused  in  a 
grateful  harmony  of  lights,  colors,  perfume, 
and  flowing  talk.  There  is  the  dusky  arc  of  a 
theatre's  orchestra  stalls,  just  as  the  house 
settles  back  into  a  sense  of  communal  plea- 
sure, and,  beyond  the  warm  glow  of  the 
footlights,  the  curtain  rises  on  some  gracious 
world  of  comedy. 

It  is  the  privilege  of  city  dwellers  to  par- 
ticipate in  these  things,  to  paint  these  inter- 
esting and  sometimes  even  beautiful  composite 
pictures  by  the  mere  process  of  living.  It  is 
not  often,  however,  that  theatre  builders  assist 
them  much.  The  auditorium  is  too  deep  or 
gaunt.  The  decorations  jeer,  the  lights  affront. 

Turn  we  now  to  the  playhouse  newly  opened 
in  Forty-fourth  Street.  .  .  .  "The  Grand  Army 
Man"  is  the  work  of  Pauline  Phelps  and 
Marion  Short,  rewritten  by  Mr.  Belasco.  The 
action  takes  place  in  a  small  Indiana  county- 
seat  in  the  early  '8o's.  Wes'  Bigelow,  the  Grand 
Army  man,  had  loved  a  girl  who  married 
another  man.  The  other  man  was  killed  in 
battle,  and,  after  the  war  was  over  and  the 
wife  also  dead,  Bigelow  adopted  his  rival's  son. 

[  253  I 


Second  Nights 


The  young  man  is  sent  by  Bigelow  and  the 
other  "old  vets"  to  deposit  $1,000.47,  which, 
with  the  tireless  help  of  the  Woman's  Relief 
Corps  and  a  prodigious  number  of  ice-cream 
sociables,  they  had  scraped  together  for  the 
new  G.  A.  R.  hall.  The  unsophisticated  youth, 
in  love  and  crazy  to  make  a  million  right  away 
so  that  he  may  marry,  falls  in  with  a  sharper 
who  gets  the  money. 

The  revelation  of  the  boy's  disgrace  comes 
on  the  night  of  opening  the  new  hall,  just  as 
the  children  are  singing  "Columbia,  the  Gem 
of  the  Ocean,"  the  W.  R.  C.  ladies  pouring 
lemonade,  the  veterans  saluting  the  old  battle- 
flag  and  congratulating  Wes'  on  having  a  fine 
boy  like  Robert,  who  could  be  trusted  to  ride 
off  on  his  bicycle  to  a  neighboring  town  with  a 
thousand  dollars  in  his  pocket.  Aware  of  this 
much  of  the  plot,  that  Robert  loved  the  proud 
judge's  daughter  and  that  the  judge — a  white- 
livered  villain  who  stayed  at  home  from  the 
war — not  only  forbade  the  match  but  pre- 
sided at  Robert's  trial  and  sent  him  to  the 
penitentiary,  from  which  he  emerged  six 
months  later,  pardoned  in  time  for  a  happy 
ending,  the  reader  will  ask  no  more.  Mr.  Be- 

[  254  ] 


By  Mr.  Belasco 


lasco's  inspired  local  color,  Mr.  Warfield's 
extraordinary  power  for  quaint  realism  and 
homely  pathos,  old  vets,  battle-flags,  thwarted 
young  love — it  is,  as  the  saying  goes,  almost  a 
shame  to  take  the  money. 

And,  happily  for  the  public,  this  is  so.  Mr. 
Belasco  is  so  congenital  a  sob  grabber  and 
snatcher  of  applause  that  when  his  material 
is  false  his  nimble  wire-pulling  becomes  almost 
intolerable.  Here  his  ingenuity  for  arranging 
effects,  his  real  genius  for  photographic  detail, 
appears  at  its  best.  There  are  such  fathers, 
such  sons,  such  G.  A.  R.  men,  such  emotions 
as  these.  They  were  a  plausible  framework  on 
which  to  hang  a  series  of  effective  situations 
and  that  wealth  of  atmosphere  which,  as  Mr. 
Belasco  builds  it  up,  is  in  itself  a  kind  of 
literature.  The  suggestive  realism  of  Wes' 
Bigelow's  sitting-room — a  sort  of  visualized 
domestic  poem — the  opening  of  the  G.  A.  R. 
hall,  the  old  court-room,  with  its  lifelike 
counsel  and  audience,  merge  into  a  picture 
real  and  American  and  one  that  puts  the  Grand 
Army  man  in  a  light  in  which  the  present 
generation  perhaps  too  seldom  sees  him. 

Mr.  Warfield,  dropping  his  dialect,  gives  a 

[  255  ] 


Second  Nights 


performance  so  simple  and  moving  that  one 
cannot  escape  the  hope  of  seeing  him  soon  in 
a  role  that  will  more  highly  test  his  powers. 
Now  that  Mansfield  is  gone  it  is  not  wor- 
thy the  talent  he  possesses  that  it  should  be 
wholly  devoted  to  parts  which,  however  ex- 
cellent as  far  as  they  go,  inevitably  become, 
when  played  night  after  night  for  years,  the 
mere  means  of  fortune  grabbing. 

November,  1907. 

Among  the  instruments  of  torture  still  em- 
ployed on  the  American  stage  is  that  fixed 
idea  known  as  the  "war  play"  —recently  rep- 
resented by  "The  Warrens  of  Virginia."  The 
sacredness  of  this  institution  which,  like  the 
tariff,  may  be  apologized  for,  shielded,  or  ex- 
cused, but  must  be  preserved  unchanged  at  all 
hazards,  was  suggested  by  the  first-night  re- 
views. "The  plot  is  the  familiar  one — a  beau- 
tiful Southern  heroine  and  a  Northern  lover, 
but  the  familiar  idea  is  clothed,"  etc.,  etc. 
''There  is  the  usual  struggle  between  love  and 
duty,  and  a  misunderstanding  not  perhaps 
altogether  logical  or  necessary,  but  the  atmos- 
pheric charm  with  which  Belasco,"  etc.,  etc. 

[256] 


By  Mr.  Belasco 


In  other  words,  a  play  of  this  sort  is  not 
judged  as  to  its  dramatic  power  or  plausibility 
or  its  portrayal  of  any  form  of  real  life,  past  or 
present,  but  as  to  how  nearly  it  fits  a  certain 
preconceived  and  petrified  pattern  of  what 
such  a  play  should  be.  Provided  it  does  fit  this 
pattern,  it  may  be  anything  in  the  world ;  every 
critic  rallies  gallantly  to  its  defence,  and  you 
may  not  touch  a  hair  of  its  head  without  pass- 
ing over  his  dead  body. 

This  piece  was  written  by  Mr.  De  Mille  and 
improved  by  Mr.  Belasco.  That  is  to  say,  in- 
stead of  being  frankly  assaulted  on  entering 
the  theatre,  you  are  led  up  to  a  pretty  wood- 
land scene,  with  real  water  flowing  over  prac- 
tical rocks,  thence  into  an  adroitly  furnished 
living-room  in  a  charming  old  Southern  home 
—pleasantly  distracted,  in  other  words,  from 
the  main  business  of  the  evening,  which  is 
your  slow  but  complete  asphyxiation  in  im- 
possible Southern  dialect,  cloying  sentiment, 
far-fetched  and  tiresome  "situations,"  and 
general  falsity.  The  worst  of  it  is  that  a  con- 
siderable number  of  people  to  whom  attending 
Mr.  Belasco's  ingenious  exhibitions  of  emo- 
tional sleight  of  hand  is  also  a  fixed  idea  will 

[  257  ] 


Second  Nights 


pay  perfectly  good  money  for  orchestra  seats 
and  keep  the  show  going,  while  honest  work- 
men— like  many  this  winter — must  shut  up 
shop.  No  wonder  there  are  terrorists  and 
dynamiters  in  the  world. 

January,  1908. 

'The  Concert"  is  adapted  from  the  German 
of  Herman  Bahr  by  Mr.  Leo  Dietrichstein, 
who  also  acts — and  acts  well,  on  the  whole- 
its  principal  part.  It  is  a  delightfully  true 
and  amusing  story  of  the  domestic  complica- 
tions of  a  celebrated  pianist  and  his  wife.  The 
"master,"  as  his  feminine  adorers — pupils  and 
hearers — are  fond  of  calling  him,  is  surrounded 
by  impressionable  women  who  transfer  into 
sentimental  admiration  for  the  man  the  emo- 
tion so  easily  stirred  by  his  art.  These  atten- 
tions the  artist  returns — amiably  and  with 
complete  impartiality — partly  for  business  rea- 
sons, for  without  the  women,  as  he  frankly  ad- 
mits, a  pianist,  like  a  novelist,  could  not  exist ; 
partly  because  his  temperament  demands  the 
stimulus  of  feminine  admiration  and  an  at- 
mosphere of  more  or  less  perilous  romance. 
The  capable  wife,  who  understands  him  per- 
[  258  ] 


By  Mr.  Belasco 


fectly  and  knows  how  essential  she  is  to  him 
under  all  this  surface  philandering,  tolerates 
this  eccentricity  with  the  same  good  humor 
that  she  does  his  absent-mindedness,  and  it  is 
only  when  one  of  his  adventures  seems  about 
to  take  a  more  serious  turn  that  she  adopts  the 
retaliatory  measures  whose  successful  working 
out  make  up  the  action  of  the  play. 

Mr.  Belasco,  himself  not  without  experience 
in  the  phenomena  of  the  artistic  pose,  has 
given  his  usual  perfect  polishing  to  one  of  the 
season's  most  entertaining  comedies. 

November,  1910. 

The  principal  character  in  "The  Case  of 
Becky"  is  a  girl  with  two  distinct  personalities 
—the  gentle  Dorothy  and  the  coarse  and  imp- 
ish Becky,  and  the  main  business  of  the  play 
is  the  gradual  strengthening  of  the  good  per- 
sonality and  weakening  of  the  bad,  until 
Becky  is  finally  "killed"  and  put  out  of  the 
way  forever. 

The  cure  is  effected  through  hypnotism,  and 
we  are  introduced  to  the  laboratory  and  sani- 
tarium of  a  specialist  in  mental  disorders  and 
see  hypnotism  practised,  not  as  by  the  charla- 

[  259  ] 


Second  Nights 


tans  of  the  rural  stage,  but  as  it  might  be  used 
by  a  Doctor  Weir  Mitchell  or  Professor  Miins- 
terberg.  We  have  felt  compelled  at  times  to 
quarrel  with  Mr.  Belasco's  photographic  accu- 
racy when  it  was  merely  a  disarming  outside 
to  inner  insincerity,  but  for  the  room  in  Doc- 
tor Emerson's  house  in  which  the  two  first 
acts  take  place  there  can  be  nothing  but 
praise.  Its  warmth  and  comfort  and  air  of  hav- 
ing been  lived  in  are  an  invaluable  foil  to  the 
creepy  nature  of  what  goes  on  therein.  Every 
detail  has  some  reason  for  being — you  should 
see  how  subtly  "comic  relief"  is  obtained— 
especially  in  the  next,  the  laboratory  scene— 
by  making  the  big,  good-natured,  "whole- 
some" young  assistant  grin  to  himself  at  es- 
pecially trying  moments  as  if  to  suggest  to  the 
spectators  not  to  worry,  that  everything's 
coming  out  all  right. 

September,  1912. 

"The  Governor's  Lady"  is  ascribed  on  the 
programme  to  Miss  Alice  Bradley,  but  the 
trail  of  Mr.  Belasco  is  everywhere  plain.  Here 
is  the  familiar  external  realism  and  inner  ab- 
surdity, the  familiar  attack  on  the  easiest  emo- 
[  260  ] 


By  Mr.  Belasco 


tions — impossible  character  changes  accom- 
panying mother's  real  Irish  stew,  crocodile 
tears  wept  into  the  real  gravy. 

Part  of  the  time,  to  be  sure,  Mr.  Belasco 
permits  a  stiff-necked  consistency  as  unusual 
as  it  is  refreshing.  The  governor's  lady  is  a 
little  old-fashioned  woman  who  has  not  grown 
as  fast  as  her  husband.  She  has  been  cooking 
and  washing  while  this  self-made  marvel  im- 
proved himself.  They  started  very  humbly. 
When  he  "arrives"  she  is  still,  socially,  where 
she  was  twenty  years  ago.  She  has  no  social 
graces,  shrinks  from  meeting  his  new,  fine 
friends. 

The  ambitious,  coming  man,  needing  a 
woman  to  preside  over  his  fine  establishment, 
is  already  at  his  wits'  ends  when  he  meets  a 
keen  young  woman,  whose  natural  taste  for 
managing  things  is  sharpened  by  coming  back, 
after  a  few  years  in  Europe,  to  her  humdrum 
Western  town.  She  is  not,  she  thinks,  above 
a  marriage  of  convenience.  The  politician  is  a 
man  who  wants  what  he  wants  when  he  wants 
it,  and  his  plan  for  a  separation  from  his  out- 
grown wife  develops  into  that  of  divorce. 

The  wife  at  first  knows  nothing  of  the  other 


Second  Nights 


woman,  and  her  stubborn  refusal  to  "desert" 
the  boy  whose  fortune  she  has  helped  to  make, 
whatever  his  grown  foolishness  about  politics — 
this  mouse's  defiance  of  the  lion  is  admirable 
and  stirring.  The  spectator's  sympathy  is  still 
with  her,  when,  after  a  very  effective  scene 
between  the  girl  and  herself,  at  the  end  of 
which  the  remorseful  young  woman  breaks 
down  and  goes  to  the  young  man  who  has  been 
waiting  for  her,  the  wife  refuses  to  be  recon- 
ciled. 

When,  several  years  later,  on  a  winter  night, 
in  a  Childs  Restaurant  in  New  York,  the  two 
meet  again — the  governor  has  been  speaking 
in  the  East,  the  wife  is  going  to  Europe — it  is 
reassuring  to  hear  her  "No,  Dan!"  as  if  she 
meant  it.  At  last,  one  thinks,  even  in  a  Belasco 
play,  there  is  somebody  with  genuine  backbone. 
Presently  the  clock  will  strike  midnight,  the 
man  browning  butter  cakes  by  the  frosted  win- 
dows will  turn  off  the  gas,  the  pale  cashier  tap 
the  bell  for  closing.  "No,  Dan!"  the  little  old 
lady  will  say,  quietly  but  irrevocably.  The  suc- 
cessful man  will  go  back  to  his  successes,  pay- 
ing for  them  a  little;  the  little  lady  will  go 
her  way,  quiet  and  self-contained.  The  slangy 
[  262  ] 


By  Mr.  Belasco 


waiter  will  make  some  quaintly  irrelevant  com- 
ment and  down  will  go  the  curtain  on  the 
Broadway  lights  and  falling  snow. 

The  sad  fact  must  be  recorded  that  this  is 
not  what  happens.  Into  this  harmonious  noc- 
turne comes  the  jarring  "happy  ending."  The 
governor  grabs  his  willing  wife  and  riotously 
hustles  her  out.  When  will  the  people  who 
try  to  give  the  public  what  it  wants  learn  to 
let  us  be  agreeably  melancholy  if  we  want  to— 
that  of  all  unhappy  things  the  "happy  end- 
ing" is  often  the  worst? 

October,  1912. 


t  263   ] 


XIII 
IN  SOCIETY 


PEOPLE  of  a  stern  and  rock-bound  cast,  in- 
tent on  things  they  can  "get  their  teeth  into," 
often  lament  the  inanity  of  society  plays  and 
dismiss  them  as  a  waste  of  time.  For  those 
whose  daily  vocation  —  like  Mr.  Shaw's  when 
he  was  reporting  concerts  and  art  exhibitions 
—forces  them  to  swallow  so  much  sugar  that 
when  they  get  into  the  theatre  they  positively 
yearn  for  something  acrid  and  bitter,  this  is 
no  doubt  true.  For  the  more  ordinary  theatre- 
goer, on  the  other  hand,  a  cleverly  written, 
well-acted  society  play  may  be  one  of  the 
greatest  time-savers  in  existence. 

Society  itself,  for  such  a  man,  is  likely  not 
to  be  very  satisfactory.  It  is  bothersome  and 
expensive  to  get  into,  and  once  there  the  life 
is  hard  and  exacting.  One  has  to  change  one's 
clothes  too  often,  and  then,  of  course,  one  must 
have  the  clothes  to  change  into.  Nor  is  the  con- 
versation, to  one  accustomed  to  the  variety 
and  surprises  of  the  outside  world,  very  inter- 

[  264] 


In  Society 

esting.  Society  folk  must  keep  up  to  snuff  in  a 
decorative  way,  as  clergymen  and  uplifters  do 
in  another,  and  work  hard  inventing  new  and 
beautiful  raiment,  food,  manners,  and  ways  of 
doing  nothing.  And,  while  their  work  is  impor- 
tant, unless  we  are  to  become  a  mere  race  of 
scowling  grubbers,  they  become,  like  all  devo- 
tees of  a  cult — actors  or  theosophists — narrow 
and  inflexible  toward  other  interests,  and  the 
outsider,  after  being  with  them  a  time,  is  gen- 
erally glad  to  get  back  to  the  more  haphazard 
and  frivolous  companionship  of  his  kind. 

The  society  play,  on  the  other  hand,  gives 
one  all  the  advantages  of  society  with  none  of 
its  disadvantages.  By  the  mere  purchase  of  an 
orchestra  seat  you  can  enjoy  the  emotions  of 
having  an  expensive  tailor,  a  "man,"  all  the 
champagne  you  want,  rebuffing  gently  but 
firmly  the  advances  of  beautiful  ladies  of  title, 
or  taking  a  cigarette  from  its  jewelled  case, 
tapping  it  with  a  bored  air,  and  asking  Car- 
stairs  or  Lord  Coldfront  whether  he  prefers  to 
meet  you  next  month  in  Cairo  or  Monte  Carlo. 
Nay — more.  For  the  people  in  the  play,  instead 
of  doing  and  saying  the  tiresome  things  they 
would  do  and  say  in  actual  life,  are  supplied 

1 265 1 


Second  Nights 


by  the  quick-witted  author,  who  lives  on  the 
third  floor  back,  where  there  is  time  and  quiet 
to  invent  them,  with  the  amusing  adventures 
they  would  like  to  have  had  and  the  witty  re- 
marks they  would  never  have  thought  of  until 
the  next  day,  if  ever,  by  themselves. 

Mr.  John  Drew,  whose  annual  impersona- 
tions of  himself  have  an  unchangeable  quality 
compared  to  which  most  other  national  in- 
stitutions seem  shifting  and  unreliable,  be- 
comes thus  as  beneficent  as  he  has  long  been 
well  beloved.  How  warm  and  homelike  a  feel- 
ing steals  o'er  the  willing  mind  as  one  en- 
counters the  bill-board  phrase,  "Mr.  John 
Drew  in  'The  Perplexed  Husband"  —or  was 
it  "A  Single  Man,"  "His  House  in  Order," 
"Jack  Straw,"  or  "Inconstant  George"? 

Again  one  sees  the  Empire  Theatre  and  Mr. 
Drew  entering  in  his  well-made  clothes.  He 
touches  a  hand  to  his  cravat,  delivers  a  few 
lines  of  that  quaint,  "modish"  patter  of  his, 
with  final  g's  dropped,  turns  a  hand  back- 
upward  at  about  the  level  of  his  lower  coat 
pocket  and  deprecatingly  surveys  his  finger 
nails,  sits  down,  and  with  light  deliberation 
flecks  his  right  trousers  leg  along  the  crease; 
[  266  ] 


In  Society 

and  presently,  with  a  line  that  leaves  him 
master  of  the  situation,  stalks  out  the  door  at 
the  rear  of  the  stage,  elbows  slightly  out,  like 
some  curious,  stiff-necked,  extremely  aristo- 
cratic bird. 

We  are  in  Lady  Rockingham's  drawing- 
room,  with  firelight  glowing  richly  on  ladies' 
gowns,  and  wit,  lights,  voices,  tempo  all  in  so 
complete  harmony  that  you  wonder  why  the 
audience  does  not  give  a  murmur  of  applause, 
as  it  would  inevitably  were  a  few  Japanese 
lanterns  hung  about  the  stage  or  Long  Island 
Sound  painted  on  the  back  drop.  Or  we  are  at 
an  English  country  house  on  a  summer  eve- 
ning after  dinner  with  the  long  windows  open 
on  the  moonlit  lawn.  How  far  away — though 
separated  but  by  a  closed  door — are  the  bar- 
baric greenish-yellow  lamps  and  the  racket 
and  manners  of  Broadway!  How  decorous  and 
urbane  the  air! 

These  are  but  manners  and  surfaces,  yet 
they  have  their  place.  There  are  moments  for 
being  merely  civilized,  as  for  thinking  and 
work,  and  such  a  play  is  one  of  civilization's 
fine  flowers.  Of  its  kind  it  is  finished — you  can 
do  more. 

[  267  ] 


Second  Nights 


Mr.  Drew  does  not,  to  be  sure,  always  take 
us  into  "society."  He  introduces  us  to  unpre- 
tentious vicarages  and  villas  in  the  country- 
how  pleasantly  unhurried  and  at  home  is  the 
young  husband  (Mr.  Drew's  host,  of  course) 
with  his  politely  casual  interest  as  to  what's 
happening  "in  town"  and  his  comfortable 
russet  shoes  rather  carefully  not  shined — yet 
Mr.  Drew  himself  must  ever  live  and  breathe 
in  his  own  peculiar  air.  He  may  be  a  middle- 
aged  literary  person,  as  in  "The  Single  Man," 
yet  the  spectator  may  be  sure  that  he  will  be 
a  Johndrew  literary  man,  and  wear  only  the 
most  beautiful  and  expensive  clothes,  drink 
champagne  with  his  dinner,  be  served  by  awe- 
struck and  velvet-footed  slaves,  and  toss  off 
without  the  slightest  mental  effort,  in  casual 
intervals  which  the  audience  never  sees,  every- 
thing from  successful  novels  to  profound  trea- 
tises on  fossils  and  sociology. 

There  seem  to  be  three  opinions  of  Mr.  Drew 
as  an  actor.  Some  accept  him  at  his  face  value, 
so  to  speak,  without  separating  actor  and 
play,  and  take  it  for  granted  because  he  is  well 
known  that  he  must  be  "good."  The  more 
critical,  not  much  interested  in  his  plays  and 
[  268  ] 


In  Society 

feeling  that  the  public  doesn't  care  primarily 
for  them,  anyway,  but  for  Mr.  Drew,  and  not 
for  what  Mr.  Drew  might  do  if  he  had  not 
petrified  so  early,  but  the  reduced,  conven- 
tionalized, smoothly  enamelled  general  John- 
drew  idea  which  the  commercial  methods  of 
our  stage  have  finally  evolved — these  com- 
plain that  Mr.  Drew  merely  walks  through 
a  part  impersonating  himself.  The  still  more 
esoteric  explain  that  Mr.  Drew's  is  the  art 
that  conceals  art,  and  that  not  to  perceive 
this  is  like  thinking  a  man  isn't  acting  merely 
because  he  isn't  doing  something  showy,  like 
Baron  Chevreuil  or  Othello. 

One  may  know  that  merely  to  act  one's  self 
on  the  stage  requires  great  skill  and  experi- 
ence and  that  finished  light  comedians  are  as 
rare  as  the  dodo,  and  still  not  unreasonably 
wish  to  see  Mr.  Drew's  talents  escape  from 
their  circumscribed  little  region  of  well-dressed 
make-believe.  In  any  case,  however,  quib- 
bling over  Mr.  Drew's  technic  is  about  as 
exciting  as  discussing  the  proportions  of  silica 
or  what-not  that  compose  the  Washington 
Monument.  There  it  stands,  and  there,  in 
his  drawing-rooms  and  smart  bachelor  lodg- 
[  269  ] 


Second  Nights 


ings,  stands  he.  It  is  pleasant,  each  autumn, 
to  know  that  he  is  coming  back,  and  that  no 
matter  what  cataclysm  may  have  happened 
in  the  meantime  he  will  not  have  changed— 
pleasant  and  good  for  our  manners  to  breathe 
that  tempered  air. 

Mr.  Drew's  unique  position  is  partly  due  to 
the  fact  that  he  is  one  of  the  few  American 
actors  who  can  "look  like  a  gentleman." 
Whether  it  is  because  we  are  kinder  to  younger 
sons,  or  because  the  social  position  of  actors 
in  England  is  more  attractive  than  here,  or 
merely  because  being  a  gentleman,  in  the  nar- 
rower sense  of  the  word,  is  a  game  like  any 
other,  which  the  English  play  better  because 
it  is  their  game  and  they've  been  playing  it 
longer,  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  few  of 
our  actors,  however  intelligent,  patriotic,  and 
good  to  their  families,  seem  quite  to  catch  the 
trick.  Even  Mr.  Drew's  gentlemanliness — one 
speaks,  of  course,  but  of  stage  personality- 
is  a  rather  curious  concoction  of  his  own,  re- 
sembling an  accent,  which,  neither  American 
nor  English,  but  a  curious  arrangement  of  the 
two,  has  become,  through  long  use,  part  and 
parcel  of  its  creator. 

[  270  ] 


In  Society 

A  too  perfect  "sincerity"  is,  indeed,  not 
always  desirable  in  these  artificial  plays.  I  re- 
member how,  while  watching  Mr.  Drew's  ele- 
gant author  in  "A  Single  Man,"  one  could 
almost  feel  the  bread  snatched  from  one's 
mouth  by  the  thousands  who,  fascinated  by 
the  prospect  of  getting  something  for  nothing, 
might  presently  plunge  into  an  already  over- 
crowded trade.  One  felt  a  similar  concern  for 
the  young  and  easily  led  while  watching  Mr. 
Bruce  McRae — one  of  the  most  charming  of 
stage  gentlemen — play  the  middle-aged  uncle 
to  Miss  Barrymore's  Lady  Frederick.  A  young 
man  of  title,  it  will  be  recalled,  fell  in  love 
with  Lady  Frederick,  and  she  could  have  had 
him  with  all  his  money  had  she  not  been 
sportsmanlike  enough  to  invite  him  to  her 
boudoir  at  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning  and  allow 
him  to  hold  her  false  "switches"  and  watch 
her  construct  her  complexion  for  the  day.  The 
susceptible  youth  was  cured.  Whereupon  Mr. 
Paradine  Fouldes,  the  young  man's  uncle  and 
a  former  suitor  of  Lady  Frederick's,  having 
reached  an  age  when  he  could  see  through 
complexions,  suggested  that  she  come  and 
help  him  adorn  a  neat  little  house  in  Park 
[  271  ] 


Second  Nights 


Lane.  He  intended  to  retire  there  and  live  on 
a  few  dried  herbs,  which,  as  Lady  Frederick 
intimated,  might  be  prepared  by  a  French 
cook.  In  real  life,  Mr.  Paradine  Fouldes  would 
have  been  a  self-indulgent,  fat,  and  flabby  old 
muffin.  Through  the  'lines,  Mr.  McRae  de- 
scribed a  life  which  would  produce  some  such 
result,  and  then  made  Mr.  Fouldes  resemble 
a  highly  intelligent  and  agreeable  Greek  god. 

There  are  times,  on  the  other  hand,  when 
"sincerity"  succeeds  in  the  most  engaging 
fashion  in  the  society  play  in  making  some- 
thing out  of  nothing.  The  part  of  Mr.  Algy 
Peppercorn,  the  exquisite  young  "tame  cat" 
in  Mr.  Somerset  Maugham's  play  "Smith" 
—especially  as  played  by  Mr.  Hassard  Short, 
who  is  particularly  amusing  at  that  sort  of 
thing — was  a  good  example. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Dallas- 
Baker  did  get  on  better  when  he  was  dangling 
about.  He  was  always  decorative,  his  epi- 
grams amused  them  and  their  guests,  and 
although  he  dropped  in  to  take  breakfast  with 
Mrs.  Dallas-Baker  several  times  a  week  and 
helped  her — for  his  taste  was  experienced  and 
exquisite — select  her  hats  and  gowns,  nothing 
would  bore  him  so  much,  he  frankly  admitted, 
[  272  ] 


In  Society 

as  to  have  to  make  love  to  her.  He  played  golf 
just  well  enough  to  let  the  rather  stodgy  hus- 
band beat  him  on  the  last  green,  and  he  could 
always  be  counted  on,  when  a  couple  of  Rose's 
women  friends  dropped  in  for  an  afternoon,  to 
make  a  fourth  at  bridge.  Not  a  fool  by  any 
means,  and  possessed  of  an  unashamed  im- 
pudence which  amounted  almost  to  a  sort  of 
courage,  he  met  and  baffled  the  frank  disgust 
of  the  returned  ranchman  with  a  witty  cyni- 
cism no  less  forceful — even  declined  to  stir 
from  his  chair  when  the  brother  threatened  to 
throw  him  out  of  the  room — knowing  well 
enough,  as  he  politely  explained,  that  the 
other  wouldn't  attempt  anything  so  brutal  in 
the  presence  of  a  lady — although  he  retired 
nimbly  enough  when  Rose  asked  him  to  go. 
In  short,  the  case  of  this  precious  young 
snipe  was  made  with  such  apparent  earnest- 
ness and  logic  by  both  author  and  actor,  that, 
while  the  audience  frankly  detested  him  and 
he  said  enough  unsympathetic  things  to  sup- 
ply the  simple-minded  villains  of  a  dozen  or- 
dinary melodramas,  he  never  lost  their  "sym- 
pathy" and  they  sighed  whenever  he  left  the 
stage  and  brightened  up  the  instant  he  re- 
turned. 

[  273  ] 


Second  Nights 


One  of  the  most  delightful  and  genuine  little 
comedies  of  recent  years,  Mr.  Hubert  Henry 
Davies's  "The  Mollusc,"  while  not  exactly  a 
"society"  play  (the  Baxters'  villa  near  Lon- 
don was  like  many  a  suburban  home  within 
thirty  miles  of  New  York,  where  all  is  sani- 
tary, serene,  and  comfortable,  and  neither  ir- 
regular hours,  undue  enthusiasms,  smoking  in 
the  parlor,  nor  wearying  thought  is  permitted 
to  cloud  the  mirror  of  the  still  domestic  pond), 
satirized  a  type  generally  associated,  at  least, 
less  with  the  workaday  than  the  more  idle 
and  decorative  world. 

Mrs.  Baxter  was  pretty,  perfectly  healthy, 
and  she  had  a  complete  disinclination  for 
work,  physical  or  mental,  of  any  kind  whatso- 
ever. With  her  beauty,  a  selfishness  so  com- 
plete as  to  have  become  quite  unconscious, 
and  a  diabolical  skill  in  placing  others  at  a 
disadvantage,  she  succeeded  in  avoiding  all 
exertion  and  in  bullying  every  one  about  her 
as  completely  as  a  school  bully  tyrannizes 
over  younger  boys  with  his  superior  strength. 
It  was  not  by  force,  but  by  absolute  inertia, 
that  she  did  things.  Her  soft  and  indolent 
loveliness  was  as  hard  to  penetrate  as  armor- 

1 274] 


In  Society 

plate  or  the  walls  of  Port  Arthur.  She  would 
send  her  husband  or  the  poor  governess  on  the 
most  abominably  unnecessary  errands  with 
the  confiding  smile  of  one  imparting  some  inti- 
mate joke,  only  understood  by  the  two.  Poor, 
patient,  grandmotherly  Mr.  Baxter  was  hen- 
pecked, not  by  force  or  shrewishness,  but  by 
his  own  uxoriousness  and  his  wife's  compla- 
cent molluskry. 

Not  that  she  whined  or  refused  to  do  things 
—she  didn't  refuse  to  put  the  flowers  in  water. 
Indeed,  she  was  glad  to  arrange  them,  if  Tom 
would  but  bring  her  a  vase;  and  as  she  was 
comfortably  reclining  with  a  novel  at  the  time, 
Tom  found  it  no  more  than  decent  to  get  the 
vase,  although  he  had  firmly  determined  that 
his  sister  should  do  it  all,  without  help.  The 
vase  brought,  there  was  the  water  to  be 
thought  of,  and  the  nearest  tap  was  outside 
in  the  garden.  Tom  got  the  water,  too,  at 
last;  and  now  was  she  ready  to  arrange  the 
flowers?  Yes,  all  ready,  Tom,  but  she  must  go 
up-stairs  and  get  her  apron  first.  What — ri- 
diculous? Why,  he  surely  wouldn't  have  her 
spoil  her  new  frock  for  a  few  flowers?  Mean- 
while, there  lay  the  flowers  wilting,  and  the 

1 275  ] 


Second  Nights 


result  was,  as  always,  that  Mrs.  Baxter  had 
her  way.  It  was  a  Doll's  House,  with  a  vol- 
untary Nora. 

It  was  the  same  when  Miss  Roberts  wanted 
to  leave.  Miss  Roberts  had  lost  her  family  in  a 
shipwreck  and  been  forced  to  become  a  gov- 
erness. She  was  capable  and  thoughtful  and 
self-sacrificing,  and  hands,  feet,  and  brain  for 
Mrs.  Baxter.  The  governess  felt,  however,  that 
the  children  needed  a  better  teacher  and  that 
it  was  her  duty  to  go,  but  it  was  impossible 
to  get  Mrs.  Baxter  to  discuss  the  matter.  She 
was  always  too  tired,  or  some  convenient  er- 
rand appeared.  The  poor  young  lady  might 
actually  have  been  immured  there  until  she 
was  old  and  gray  had  not  Tom  Kemp  come 
back  from  Colorado. 

The  latter's  efforts  to  cure  his  sister's  mol- 
luskry  and  incidentally  to  woo  Miss  Roberts 
supplied  the  slight  story.  One  expected,  of 
course,  a  sort  of  Katharine  and  Petruchio  re- 
sult, but  the  author  had  the  happy  insight 
not  to  permit  any  improbable  reformation. 
Only  once  did  the  young  woman  show  the 
slightest  appreciation  of  her  own  enormities, 
and  that  was  when  her  brother  furiously  in- 

1 276] 


In  Society 

formed  her  that  she  was  wearing  her  lovely 
dressing-gown  and  lying  on  the  divan  pretend- 
ing to  be  sick  merely  because  she  knew  it  made 
her  look  pretty;  a  beatific  smile  slowly  spread 
over  her  face,  and  she  slipped  down  a  bit  far- 
ther on  the  pillow,  with  the  egoistic  rapture 
of  one  slipping  slowly  into  a  warm  bath.  She 
was,  to  be  sure,  galvanized  into  pseudo-ac- 
tivity when  her  husband  turned  to  the  govern- 
ess after  spraining  his  ankle — Mrs.  Baxter  had 
sent  him  up-stairs  to  move  the  furniture — and 
undertook  to  act  as  nurse.  Even  here,  however, 
she  was  true  to  her  character,  and,  smilingly 
oblivious  to  the  fact  that  her  husband  was 
writhing  in  anguish,  vigorously  wound  the 
bandages  about  his  leg,  boots,  trousers,  and  all. 
There  was  something  Ibsen-like  about  this 
little  household — indolent  wife,  enchanted 
husband,  trim,  capable  governess  usurping  the 
wife's  place — Ibsen  making  merry,  if  one  could 
imagine  it.  It  was  true  and  deft  as  far  as  it 
went,  really  contributed  something,  answered 
the  question — why,  when  life  itself  is  so 
amusing,  should  any  one  wish  to  pay  to  be 
shut  up  in  a  theatre? 

[  277  ] 


XIV 
EAST  OF   SUEZ 


THE  first  scene  of  ''Kismet"  was  well  under 
way  as  I  walked  down  the  aisle,  knowing,  for- 
tunately, almost  nothing  about  the  play  ex- 
cept that  Mr.  Edward  Knoblauch  had  written 
it,  that  it  was  very  successful  in  London,  and 
now  playing  or  about  to  be  played  all  over  the 
civilized  world.  Fortunate,  because  otherwise 
I  might  not  have  been  reminded  of  the  impor- 
tance of  understanding  the  key  in  which  an 
author's  work  is  set  and  of  how  comparatively 
unaccustomed  both  audience  and  players  are 
to-day  to  things  set  in  a  key  of  fantasy.  The 
emphasis  in  these  days  is  generally  on  the 
stunning  accuracy  with  which  a  man  strikes 
a  match  or  masticates  a  wedge  of  apple  pie, 
and  if  the  outer  shell  of  him  looks  lifelike  he  is 
assumed  to  be  real,  and  few  bother  about  how 
outlandishly  his  mind  and  heart  may  work. 
And  beholding  Mr.  Otis  Skinner  in  an  un- 
familiar, coffee-colored  make-up,  sitting  in  the 
street  in  front  of  a  sort  of  temple,  mouth- 
ing and  waving  his  arms  with  what  seemed 
[  278  ] 


East  of  Suez 

unnecessary  noise  and  artifice — followed  by 
astonishing  laryngeal  phenomena  from  all  con- 
cerned— one  promptly  drew  profound  conclu- 
sions on  the  artificiality  of  the  stage  in  general 
and  the  tedium  of  this  particular  piece. 

And  it  was  not  until  bazaars  and  harems, 
mosques,  muezzins,  sword-bearers,  incense, 
magic,  and  goodness  knows  what  cataracts  of 
Oriental  color  had  fairly  drenched  us — more 
especially  after  Mr.  Otis  Skinner,  as  the  hero, 
had  choked  to  death  one  muffiny  old  gentle- 
man with  a  long  white  beard,  stabbed  another, 
and  drowned  him  in  the  harem  pool,  gayly 
pushing  his  head  under  water  and  watching 
the  bubbles  rise  (behavior  no  hero  of  a  mod- 
ern realistic  play  would  dare  to  risk  with 
his  audience) — that  the  dazzling  idea  flashed 
across  me  that  this  was  not  mere  spectacular 
realism  like  "The  Garden  of  Allah,"  for  in- 
stance, but  a  dramatization  of  the  spirit  of  the 
Arabian  Nights,  to  be  taken  in  exactly  the 
same  state  of  mind  that  you  would  take 
Sindbad  sailing  away  on  the  roc's  back,  or  the 
Forty  Thieves  boiling  in  oil.  .  .  . 

Mr.  Richard  Walton  Tully's  Hawaiian  play, 
"The  Bird  of  Paradise,"  like  "Kismet,"  is 

[  279  ] 


Second  Nights 


fairly  dripping  with  color.  Ringing  would  per- 
haps be  as  appropriate  a  word,  for  the  quick 
pagan  beat  and  velvety  hum  of  Hawaiian  gui- 
tars is  never  very  far  away,  and  whenever 
the  action  becomes  acute — whether  under  the 
palms  of  the  Puna  Coast,  or  in  the  moonlight 
of  Honolulu,  or  away  up  on  the  boiling  crater 
of  Kilauea — a  convenient  orchestra  promptly 
throws  in  the  sobbing  breeze  of  its  quivered 
strings. 

The  story  of  the  play  is  that  of  a  young 
American  who  goes  to  the  tropics,  marries  a 
native  Hawaiian  girl  and  suffers  the  not  un- 
common degeneration.  Another  white  man,  a 
beach-comber,  gone  to  pieces,  too,  but  mostly 
through  drink,  is  pulled  up  by  the  American 
girl  the  first  man  loses,  and  takes  the  former's 
place  in  the  end.  Meanwhile,  the  poor  little 
Hawaiian,  Luana,  a  creature  born  to  laugh  and 
love  and  sing  and  bask  in  the  sun  and  swim, 
unable  to  make  herself  a  white  woman,  finally 
—a  sacrifice  being  needed  to  propitiate  Pele— 
offers  herself  and,  to  the  accompaniment  of 
the  wailing  music  aforesaid,  throws  herself  into 
the  volcano. 

In  spite  of  this  somewhat  lurid  conclusion, 
[  280  ] 


East  of  Suez 

Mr.  Tully  tells  a  moving  story.  The  young 
sentimentalist,  the  virile  and  matter-of-fact 
promoter  and  plantation  owner,  the  beach- 
comber and  the  pagan  girl  are  types  genuine 
to  every  remote  tropical  neighborhood,  and 
the  underlying  riddle  real  and  unanswerable. 

The  charm  of  the  tropics  is  not — as  popular 
opinion  somewhat  ingenuously  seems  to  as- 
sume— the  mere  chance  to  cut  loose  and  do 
what  decency  forbids  at  home.  It  is  more  sub- 
tle than  that.  It  is  its  beauty,  its  spaciousness 
and  grace  which  first  allure  and  make  our 
noisy  sky-scraper  and  sweat-shop  civilization 
seem  uncivilized,  cold,  brutal,  and  absurd.  As 
the  British  soldier,  thinking  of  Mandalay  in 
the  grime  and  roar  of  London,  says: 

"Beefy  face  an'  grubby  'and,  law  wot  do  they  under- 
stand ? 

I've  a  neater,  sweeter  maiden  in  a  cleaner,  greener 
land." 

The  real  danger  to  the  white  man  is  not  in 
crude  animalism,  of  which  there  is  plenty  at 
home,  but  that  all  sense-impressions,  even  the 
subtlest,  become  so  vivid  that  they  crowd  out 
and  nullify  everything  else.  He  feels,  but  does 
[  281  ] 


Second  Nights 


not  think.  The  sun  satisfies.  And  after  that, 
going  to  pieces  is  not  difficult.  Mr.  Tully 
might  have  made  a  little  more  of  this  masked 
face  the  tropics  wear — that  he  understands  it 
one  of  his  characters  suggests  when  he  speaks 
of  the  tropics  "getting  her  flower-tipped  fin- 
gers into  your  brain." 

"Kismet"  was  unusual  and  good  fun,  but 
"Sumurun"  —  which  Mr.  Winthrop  Ames  has 
brought  over  bag  and  baggage  from  its  suc- 
cesses in  London  and  Berlin — is  more  unusual 
and  even  more  fun.  "Sumurun"  is  the  real 
thing. 

Both  are  Arabian  Nights  entertainments 
arranged  for  the  stage,  and  therefore  outside 
the  spectator's  usual  zone  of  feeling  and  ex- 
perience, but  Mr.  Knoblauch's  play  is  more  or 
less  held  down  to  this  every-day  area  by  the 
every-day  actors  who  declaim  its  lines,  and  by 
the  scenes  which,  brilliant  and  atmospheric  as 
they  are,  differ  from  those  we  are  familiar 
with,  less  in  kind  than  in  degree. 

The  Reinhardt  stage  pictures,  on  the  other 
hand,  as  compared  with  the  usual  thing,  have 
almost  the  "bite"  of  a  poster  compared  with 
[  282  ] 


East  of  Suez 

a  photograph,  and  the  wild  Arabian  Nights 
story  they  tell  is  swept  breathlessly  along  by 
music  and  vivid  pantomimic  acting,  not  once 
brought  down  to  earth  by  the  intrusion  of  a 
spoken  word.  The  result  strikes  a  whole  new 
set  of  theatrical  nerves,  so  to  speak,  and  is  cor- 
respondingly fresh  and  entertaining. 

A  great  deal  has  been  written  about  Pro- 
fessor Max  Reinhardt's  stage  management, 
but  its  essential  quality  appears  to  be  the 
elimination  of  detail  and  the  concentration  of 
emphasis — especially  through  the  intelligent 
use  of  light  and  color — on  significant  points. 
It  is  impressionism  applied  to  the  stage. 

While  "Sumurun"  can  scarcely  be  com- 
pared with  the  domestic  dramas  which  have 
made  Mr.  Belasco's  name,  Professor  Rein- 
hardt's work  here  is  doubtless  characteristic, 
and  it  is  quite  at  the  opposite  pole  from  Mr. 
Belasco's.  The  latter  makes  his  stage  pictures 
by  an  intelligent  heaping  up  of  photographic 
detail:  brooks  with  real  water,  storms  with 
real  rain,  rooms  that  look  as  if  they  had  been 
lived  in — fireplaces,  lamps,  coat  hooks,  old 
pictures,  goodness  knows  what,  done  just  so. 

The  German  wizard's  method  is,  appar- 
[  283  ] 


Second  Nights 


ently,  just  the  reverse  of  this.  He  flattens  his 
background  down  to  almost  nothing — to  a 
mere  symbol,  so  to  speak.  Here,  for  instance, 
are  all  the  principal  characters  hurrying  hot- 
foot to  the  Sheik's  palace — the  grim  chief  him- 
self; his  favorite  wife,  the  beautiful  Sumurun, 
and  her  handmaidens;  his  amorous  son;  the 
chest  containing  the  love-sick  silk  merchant 
and  the  supposedly  lifeless  body  of  the  hunch- 
back; the  wanton  slave  girl;  the  funny,  jiggly 
janitor  of  the  bazaar. 

Away  they  go  across  the  scene,  like  the 
characters  in  an  old-fashioned  melodrama 
after  the  third  act,  each  with  his  own  char- 
acteristic tempo,  and  the  background  is 
scarcely  more  than  two  flat  bands  of  color— 
the  white  wall  against  which  they  stand  out 
and — painted  on  the  drop  as  I  recall  it — the 
sky  and  the  flat,  black  silhouette  of  the  palace 
towers.  No  time  is  lost  in  setting  the  scene, 
the  attention  is  concentrated  on  the  moving 
figures,  and  the  flat  silhouette  of  the  palace 
towers  is  far  more  suggestive,  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, than  any  attempt  at  genuine  per- 
spective could  be. 

Or,    again,   he    shows   the   outside   of  the 
[  284  ] 


East  of  Suez 

hunchback's  theatre — merely  a  door  and  a  flat 
wall  with  a  grated  window  above  it,  but  this 
grating  is  set  in  a  square  of  the  vividest  indigo 
blue,  making  all  the  more  vivid  as  she  appears 
behind  the  grating,  the  slave  girl's  brown  skin, 
white  teeth,  and  flashing  eyes. 

The  scene  changes  and  we  are  inside  the 
theatre,  and  a  story  like  that  of  "I  Pagliacci" 
is  told,  compressed  into  a  few  minutes'  pan- 
tomime— in  the  centre  the  hunchback's  tiny 
stage,  with  the  eager,  lamp-lit  faces  of  his  au- 
dience turned  toward,  instead  of  away  from, 
the  real  audience,  as  at  the  opera.  To  the  left, 
in  the  shadow,  the  fickle  slave  girl  and,  pres- 
ently, her  lover.  Here  again  the  background  is 
flattened  and  simplified  down  to  almost  solid 
shadow,  against  which  the  lighted  faces  of  the 
mimic  audience — only  a  handful  are  needed- 
stand  out,  a  splash  of  vivid  color.  What  you 
get  is  not  an  actual  crowd,  as  at  the  opera,  but 
the  idea,  the  suggestion  of  a  crowd — and  this 
is  characteristic  of  Reinhardt's  method.  He 
hits  the  imagination  instead  of  merely  filling 
the  eye. 

As  an  entertainment,  "Sumurun"  is  as  old 
as  the  hills  rather  than  new — as  old  as  the 


Second  Nights 


Punch  and  Judy  show.  One  watches  horror 
sweep  after  horror  with  the  same  sense  of  de- 
tachment, of  childlike  delight.  The  remote 
scene,  the  Arabian  Nights  spirit  in  which  it  is 
all  conceived — with  broad  humor  alternating 
with  horror — partly  explains  this;  it  is  partly 
due  to  the  skilful  speed  with  which  one  thing 
follows  another,  before  you  have  time  to 
think;  and  most  of  all,  perhaps,  to  the  absence 
of  spoken  words.  It  doesn't  bother  one  very 
much  if  poster  people  do  sew  each  other  up  in 
sacks  or  slash  each  other's  heads  off.  And  so 
with  all  its  superficial  violence,  "Sumurun" 
sweeps  by  like  a  landscape — scarcely  touches 
more  than  one's  eyes  and  ears  and  taste  for 
wild  romance.  Here  is  a  play  which  is  real 
"play,"  which  sends  one  back  into  Broadway 
with  the  delightful  sensation  of  having  been 
away  from  New  York. 

February,  1912. 


[286] 


«  ^gr —         s> 

XV 

"THE  GREAT   AMERICAN 
PLAY" 

"T  TTI 

PLAY-WRITING  has  become  an  avocation 
so  common  in  America  that  here  and  there  it 
might  almost  be  included  among  the  popular 
sports.  With  those  who  write  at  all,  not  to  be 
trying  a  play  is  almost  to  be  odd,  while  innu- 
merable amateurs,  in  the  intervals  of  their  reg- 
ular work,  take  a  flier,  as  it  were,  at  this  dif- 
ficult art,  and  now  and  again  actually  get  a 
play  put  on. 

There  are  courses  in  play-writing  in  the  col- 
leges, magazines  devoted  to  play  craftsman- 
ship, leagues  for  encouraging  good  plays  and 
their  audiences.  The  stage  is  closer  to  the  or- 
dinary man's  life  than  it  used  to  be,  and  those 
who  feel  they  have  something  to  say  are  more 
and  more  turning  there  to  say  it. 

This  change  is  largely  due,  no  doubt,  to  a 
changed  understanding  of  the  drama,  to  the 
enthusiasm  for  the  drama  of  every-day  life 
which  Ibsen's  plays  did  so  much  to  encour- 

[  287  ] 


Second  Nights 


age,  the  growing  realization  that  the>  theatre 
should  be  democratic  and  intelligent  and  open 
to  all  the  influences  of  our  complicated  actual 
life.  In  our  country,  moreover,  the  awaken- 
ing of  conscience—  "muckraking" — of  recent 
years  has  had  much  to  do  with  bringing  new 
blood  into  the  theatre. 

In  the  days  when  Bronson  Howard's  "Aris- 
tocracy" and  "Shenandoah"  held  the  boards 
it  would  scarcely  have  occurred  to  a  public- 
spirited  citizen,  not  a  professional  playwright, 
to  fight  cocaine  selling  by  dashing  off  a  little 
piece  about  it — like  Mr.  J.  M.  Patterson's 
"Dope"— -to  be  played  in  vaudeville. 

In  this  sketch,  two  young  altruists  went 
into  the  slums  to  get  evidence  against  a  fourth- 
rate  druggist  who  was  debauching  the  neigh- 
borhood by  selling  cocaine.  They  caught  their 
man,  telephoned  for  the  police,  and  then,  while 
the  patrol-wagon  was  coming,  it  was  brought 
out  that  the  druggist  got  his  cocaine  from  the 
firm  of  manufacturing  chemists  founded  by 
the  young  man's  father,  and  that  the  proprie- 
tor of  the  tenement  whose  extortionate  rents 
had  driven  the  druggist  to  sell  cocaine  in 
order  to  live  was  the  mother  of  the  young 
[  288  ] 


The  Great  American  Play" 


woman.  The  air  was  hot  at  the  time  with 
protests  against  the  cocaine  traffic  and  the 
willingness  of  respectable  landlords  to  shut 
their  eyes  to  the  sources  of  their  incomes ;  and 
"Dope,"  sandwiched  in  between  clog-dancers 
and  sentimental  balladists,  had  all  the  bite  of 
a  red-hot  editorial  in  the  evening's  paper.  The 
music-hall  was  used  for  a  new  purpose — as 
you  would  use  a  hired  hall  or  the  end  of  a 
truck. 

There  have  been  many  American  plays  with 
this  controversial,  reforming  basis,  interesting 
as  a  sign  of  wide-awake  intention,  at  any  rate, 
however  indifferently  built.  This  same  new  en- 
thusiasm has  adventured,  without  so  explicit 
an  ethical  burden,  into  the  most  varied  aspects 
of  American  life.  Mr.  Eugene  Walter  shows  us 
the  acrid  existence  of  the  small  city  clerk  trying 
to  live  on  nothing  a  year;  Mr.  James  Forbes, 
the  slangy  likableness  of  the  chorus  girl;  Miss 
Margaret  Mayo,  the  "inside"  view  of  the 
circus.  Mr.  George  Cohan  writes  and  sings  with 
genuine  feeling  of  the  brassy  life  of  Broadway. 
Mr.  Thompson  Buchanan  goes  out  into  the 
Kentucky  mountains  and  laughs  at  the  ven- 
dettas— generally  treated  romantically — some- 
[  289  ] 


Second  Nights 


what  as  Mr.  Shaw  laughed  at  militarism  in 
"Arms  and  the  Man."  Mr.  Edward  Sheldon 
tackles  the  political  boss,  the  Salvation  Army, 
the  negro  question,  almost  before  he  is  out 
of  college.  In  Mr.  Edgar  Selwyn's  "Country 
Boy"  we  share  the  smelly,  homesick  air  of 
a  New  York  boarding-house,  in  Mr.  Jesse 
Williams's  "The  Stolen  Story"  and  Mr.  Pat- 
terson's "The  Fourth  Estate"  learn  how  re- 
porters work  and  feel  and  see  the  very  paper 
coming  warm  from  the  press.  Plays  like  these 
and  a  score  of  others  may  have  no  startling 
significance,  but  they  are  characteristic  of  an 
increasing  interest  in  and  familiarity  with  the 
theatre,  a  readiness  to  use  home-grown  material 
and  use  it  in  our  own  way. 

The  health  of  the  American  theatre  in  this 
direction  is  all  that  could  be  asked.  And  in 
spite  of  the  scant  appreciation  given  at  times 
to  distinguished  work,  American  audiences  are 
more  open  and  sympathetic — to  judge  by 
the  reception  given  the  plays  of  Ibsen  and 
Shaw,  for  example — to  new  experiences  in  the 
theatre  than  those  of  England.  In  the  matter 
of  individual  accomplishment,  however,  not  so 
much  may  be  said. 

[  290  ] 


The  Great  American  Play 


Mr.  Clyde  Fitch — I  speak  but  of  the  writers 
coincident  with  this  changing  time — wrote 
charmingly  and  with  astonishing  ease.  Mr. 
Augustus  Thomas  is  always  vigorous,  enter- 
taining, and  thoroughly  American,  yet  neither 
of  them  has  the  sustained  skill  of  Pinero  nor 
the  distinguished  fancy  of  Barrie,  nor  the  wit 
and  grown-up  intellectuality  of  Mr.  Shaw.  Our 
younger  men,  taken  together,  could  scarcely 
be  set  beside  Mr.  Galsworthy  and  the  younger 
English  realists,  nor  have  we  any  wholly  in- 
digenous movement  corresponding  to  that  rep- 
resented by  the  Irish  players  and  their  plays. 

Just  what  the  "great  American  play,"  so 
frequently  mentioned  on  the  bill-boards,  ought 
to  be,  or  how  important  it  is  that  it  should 
be  "American"  is  not  altogether  clear.  Great 
plays  incline  to  be  universal  and,  indeed,  in 
the  nature  of  things,  the  quality  of  nation- 
ality reveals  itself  less  readily  on  the  stage, 
where  action  is  indispensable,  than  in  the 
novel,  where  so  much  may  be  described.  The 
generalization  cannot  be  pressed,  especially 
in  the  presence  of  the  more  modern  play,  where 
character  is  everything  and  action,  in  the  sense 
of  mere  bustle,  almost  nothing  at  all;  but 

[  291  ] 


Second  Nights 


there  is  an  essential  difference  between  the 
arts,  nevertheless.  It  is  one  thing,  for  instance, 
to  describe  a  girl's  blue  eyes  and  another  to 
make  her  talk  as  if  she  had  blue  eyes. 

It  is  desirable,  at  any  rate,  that  American 
play-writers  use  the  life  about  them  and  not 
merely  imitate  foreign  models  or  pass  off  as 
their  own  people  Frenchmen  or  Russians  in 
American  clothes.  A  powerful  play  on  the 
clash  between  a  man's  wife  and  his  mistress 
might  be  set  in  an  American  scene,  but  the 
theme  would  not  seem  to  spring  from  the  soil 
as  it  might  in  another  country,  where  the 
husband's  merely  sentimental  vagaries  are 
more  or  less  overlooked  provided  he  is  good 
to  his  family,  according  to  local  standards, 
and  sees  that  the  integrity  of  his  home  is  pre- 
served. The  play  would  not  belong  here  in 
the  sense  that  "The  Pit"  —in  which  a  hus- 
band neglected  his  wife  for  his  business— be- 
longed to  Chicago. 

One  of  the  most  "American"  plays  of  recent 
years,  so  far  as  its  theme  was  concerned,  was 
"The  Melting  Pot"  of  Mr.  Israel  Zangwill, 
who  happens  to  be  an  English  Jew.  "  Here  you 
stand,"  said  the  hero,  of  the  immigrants  at 
[  292  ] 


The  Great  American  Play 


Ellis  Island,  "in  your  fifty  groups,  with  your 
fifty  languages  and  histories,  and  your  fifty 
blood  hatreds  and  rivalries.  But  you  won't  be 
long  like  that,  brothers,  for  these  are  the  fires 
of  God  you've  come  to — these  are  the  fires  of 
God.  A  fig  for  your  feuds  and  vendettas!  Ger- 
mans and  Frenchmen,  Irishmen  and  English- 
men, Jews  and  Russians— into  the  crucible 
with  you  all!  God  is  making  the  American!" 

The  young  man  was  a  Russian  Jew,  whose 
family  had  been  slaughtered  at  Kishineff. 
Behind  him  was  the  memory  of  the  massacre 
and  the  "cold  butcher's  face"  of  the  officer 
who  directed  it.  He  himself  had  been  wounded 
in  the  left  shoulder,  and  his  violin,  resting 
there,  roused  the  wound  sometimes.  Before 
him  was  this  new  world — no  wonder  he  saw 
it  in  the  bright  light  in  which  it  appeared  to  its 
founders. 

He  met  Vera  Revendal  while  playing  his 
violin  at  a  settlement  house  and  the  young 
people  fell  in  love.  But  this  love  had  to  be 
tested  in  the  crucible,  too,  and  out  of  that  Mr. 
Zangwill  made  his  play. 

Miss  Revendal  was  the  daughter  of  a  Rus- 
sian nobleman.  She  had  revolted  against  the 

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ideas  of  her  father  and  migrated  to  New  York, 
but  she  still  had  an  orthodox  Russian's  prej- 
udice against  Jews.  And  she  could  not  sur- 
render without  a  struggle.  That  was  her  test. 

Her  father  was  the  Russian  officer  whom 
David  had  seen  at  Kishineff.  When  he  came 
to  New  York  to  find  his  daughter,  and  the  face 
which  had  so  long  been  hovering  in  the  young 
musician's  consciousness  suddenly  confronted 
him,  the  old  madness  returned.  In  the  scene 
between  the  two  men  which  followed,  the 
remnants  of  Vera's  vague  uneasiness,  of  the 
centuries  of  Jew  loathing,  were  brushed  away, 
but  for  David  an  impassable  barrier  seemed  to 
rise.  He  could  hear  the  church-bells  ringing 
again  and  the  simple  people  exchanging  good 
wishes,  and  see  his  mother  and  father  and 
little  sister — and  what  followed. 

This  was  his  test.  His  symphony  was  played 
at  last  with  great  success,  but  failure  seemed 
to  shriek  from  the  violins  and  thunder  from 
the  drums.  For  he  had  been  false  to  his  music, 
"gloating  over  the  old  blood-stains,"  denying 
that  his  own  hate  could  be  dissolved  in  any 
melting-pot.  When  he  was  able  to  see  this  at 
last  he  and  Vera  were  standing  on  the  roof  of 

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the  settlement  house  looking  out  over  New 
York.  The  sun  was  setting  and  the  jagged 
sky-line  was  ablaze. 

'There  she  lies,"  he  cried,  "the  great  melt- 
ing-pot— listen.  Can't  you  hear  the  roaring 
and  the  bubbling?  There  gapes  her  mouth — 
the  harbor  where  a  thousand  mammoth 
feeders  pour  in  their  human  freight.  Celt  and 
Latin,  Slav  and  Teuton,  Greek  and  Syrian. 
How  the  great  Alchemist  melts  and  fuses 
them  with  his  purging  flame!  Ah,  Vera,  what 
is  the  glory  of  Rome  and  Jerusalem,  where 
all  nations  come  to  worship  and  look  back, 
compared  to  the  glory  of  America,  where  all 
nations  come  to  labor  and  look  forward!" 

Mr.  Zangwill's  play  had  faults  which  made 
it  inacceptable  to  the  provincial  New  York 
audience  and  it  was  received  much  more 
warmly  by  more  American  Chicago.  It  was 
"literary"  and  over-rhetorical,  but  there  was 
poetry  and  power  in  it,  nevertheless,  and  a 
conviction  common  to  all  Americans  put  into 
words — a  deeper  and  more  resonant  American 
note  struck  than  is  often  heard  on  our  stage. 

Mr.  Fitch,  with  all  his  sensitive  eye  and 
ear  and  nimble  craftsmanship  never  struck 

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it,  although  he  could  always  be  counted  on 
for  closely  observed  bits  of  mosaic  which 
caught  the  very  breath  of  minor  aspects  of 
American  life,  especially  of  New  York.  Mr. 
Fitch  was  a  flower  of  the  city  asphalt  rather 
than  the  soil,  and  more  at  home  in  drawing- 
rooms,  millinery  shops,  and  restaurants  than 
with  farmers,  travelling  salesmen,  business 
men  with  cigars  in  their  faces,  pioneers.  The 
low  diapason  of  the  wheat,  which  Frank 
Norris  heard  rumbling  up  from  millions  of 
acres  of  Western  prairie,  through  the  pit  at 
Chicago  and  on  across  the  earth,  was  too  vast 
and  chaotic  a  sound  for  his  sensitive  ear,  and 
even  when  he  did  touch  Wall  Street  or  business, 
the  spectator  somehow  felt  that  he  was  writ- 
ing from  an  up-town  bachelor  apartment,  care- 
fully furnished  with  European  objects  of  art. 
The  Americanism  of  Mr.  Augustus  Thomas, 
on  the  other  hand,  is  all  wool  and  a  yard 
wide,  as  the  phrase  goes.  He  knows  East  and 
West,  Broadway  and  the  cattle-range,  is  at 
home  with  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men. 
America  is  implicit  in  every  line  of  his  plays, 
but  it  is  understood  rather  than  expressed, 
more  a  matter  of  flavor  than  of  theme. 

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Such  a  play  as  "Arizona"  is  soaked  with 
the  atmosphere  of  the  old  West,  when  desert 
army  posts  were  needed  and  cattle  still  roamed 
the  unfenced  range.  Here  is  old  Canby,  the 
ranchman  who  ruled  like  a  prince  over  his 
twenty  miles  of  blazing  valley,  and  scarce  ad- 
mitted the  right  of  the  United  States  troops 
to  trespass  there;  the  grizzled  cavalry  colonel 
"married  to  his  granddaughter";  the  young 
wife,  restless  at  the  army  post,  and  charmed 
for  the  moment  by  the  villainous  captain's 
tales  of  ''God's  country"  and  the  life  "back 
East";  noble  young  Lieutenant  Denton,  in- 
terfering to  save  a  woman's  honor,  only  to 
be  misunderstood  and  marched  off — tramp, 
tramp,  tramp — to  the  guard-house;  Tony,  the 
Mexican  vaquero,  bringing  swift  death  to  the 
villain  at  last  with  a  quick  shot  from  his  re- 
volver; all  this  in  the  vivid  Arizona  sunshine 
—desert  dust  on  coats  and  hats,  the  rattle  of 
hoofs  off  stage,  and  the  bugles  of  the  Eleventh 
calling  in  the  distance — it's  a  fine  old  play, 
with  a  strong  masculine  humor  and  the  kind 
of  thrills  that  never  grow  old. 

Yet  the  main  theme — an  intrigue  between 
a  restless  young  wife  and  a  dashing  would-be 

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seducer — is  as  old  as  the  theatre.  It  did  not 
spring  unmistakably  from  the  soil,  like  the 
fight  between  the  farmers  and  the  railroad  in 
Frank  Norris's  "Octopus." 

In  the  plays  which  followed  his  earlier  melo- 
dramas— light,  sketchy  pieces  like  "De  Lan- 
cey"  and  "Mrs.  Leffingwell's  Boots"— Mr. 
Thomas  seemed  a  journalist,  writing  for  the 
stage  instead  of  a  paper,  with  a  newspaper 
man's  lively  interest  in  the  world  about  him 
and  an  unmistakable  gift  for  catching  its  warm, 
humorous  surfaces.  His  work  might  be  uneven 
and  careless,  yet  there  was  always  some  flash 
of  strong  masculine  humor — drawn,  perhaps, 
from  the  day's  news — some  glimpse  of  charac- 
ter, which  welded  the  scene  to  real  life  as  the 
average  American  lives  it. 

Mrs.  Pipp,  in  Mr.  Thomas's  dramatization 
of  Mr.  Gibson's  drawings,  was  embarrassed 
by  what  the  French  count  called  her  embon- 
point. "What?"  asked  her  much-abused  hus- 
band. "Ombongpwong/  said  Mrs.  Pipp.  "I 
don't  know  what  it  is,"  sighed  Mr.  Pipp,  "but 
it  sounds  like  a  piece  of  war  news."  " That's 
just  how  much  water  you  draw,"  said  Mr. 
Pipp,  explaining  to  the  young  treasurer  in  his 

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bank  why  the  latter  wasn't  regarded  as  an 
eligible  suitor  by  Mrs.  Pipp.  He  told  of  the 
changes  since  he  began  life  in  Ohio  and  Mrs. 
Pipp's  father  kept  a  sailor's  outfitting  shop. 
"Why,  her  back  hair  used  to  smell  of  pine  tar 
in  those  days,"  said  Mr.  Pipp.  "When  I  was 
working  I  was  well  every  day,"  he  continued, 
telling  of  his  retirement  from  business.  "Now 
I  have  all  the  symptoms  of  all  the  diseases  in 
the  mineral-water  advertisements." 

"Men  will  be  men,"  sighed  the  lady  from 
South  Bend  in  "The  Rangers,"  "especially 
white  men  in  a  tropical  country." 

"Why,"  De  Lancey  was  asked,  "do  your 
friends  bring  you  whiskey?"  He  had  had  a 
fall  from  his  horse  and  broken  his  collar-bone, 
but  he  didn't  want  Miss  Marple  to  know  it. 
"Because,"  replies  De  Lancey,  "they  are  my 
friends."  On  being  asked  by  an  introspective 
young  woman  why  he  knew  life  was  worth 
living  he  promptly  replied:  "Why"  —I  para- 
phrase from  memory— "because  it's  full  of 
pretty  girls  and  friends  and  excitement  and 
fun — because  it  is."  The  testimony  of  his 
senses  was  good  enough  for  him. 

The  fact  that  the  playwright  was  felt  to 

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share  De  Lancey's  content  with  the  visible 
world  gave  special  interest  to  his  venture 
into  the  world  of  subconscious  forces  in  "The 
Witching  Hour"  and  "The  Harvest  Moon." 
While  these  represent  an  excursion  somewhat 
apart  from  the  special  subject  under  con- 
sideration here,  they  are  pertinent  to  it  in 
this  sense — that,  without  losing  his  power  to 
entertain,  Mr.  Thomas  was  more  consistently 
effective  here  than  in  his  sketchy  pieces,  and 
took  his  audience  into  new  and  unexplored 
regions  of  serious  and  stimulating  thought.  A 
murder,  committed  by  a  nervous  boy  thrown 
into  a  fit  of  insanity  by  the  sight  of  a  cat's-eye 
jewel,  a  morbid  fear  of  which  he  had  inherited, 
began  "The  Witching  Hour"  and  the  main 
action  consisted  of  the  efforts  of  his  family 
and  friends  to  save  him  from  conviction. 

The  junction  between  the  two  worlds  was 
not  always  plausible,  but  there  were  scenes, 
like  that  in  which  the  spirit  of  a  lost  sweet- 
heart (in  this  case  the  boy's  grandmother) 
influences  a  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court,  as 
effective  as  they  were  unexpected.  It  was  in- 
teresting, again,  to  see  the  effect  of  suggestion 
on  a  jury.  One  of  the  boy's  friends  has  per- 

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mitted  the  newspapers  to  publish  a  secret 
which  would  shake  considerably  the  power  of 
the  prosecution.  But  how  could  the  jury  know 
it?  "Five  hundred  thousand  are  reading  that 
story  now,"  cried  the  friend,  "excited  about  it, 
absorbed  in  it,  loathing  Frank  Hardmuth.  All 
this  part  of  the  country  is  thinking  one  thing. 
Do  you  suppose  anything  can  keep  that 
thought  from  affecting  the  minds  of  these 
twelve  men  in  the  jury-box?" 

And  with  this  new  material  was  presented 
a  characteristic  Thomas  figure — an  amiable, 
finely  pickled,  check-suit-red-tie-and-diamond- 
horseshoe  old  Kentucky  sinner,  who  would 
have  "matched  with  Destiny  for  beers"  at 
the  Pearly  Gate  itself.  He  had  lost  two  hun- 
dred thousand  dollars,  first  and  last,  but  he 
calculated  that  this  only  meant  an  expendi- 
ture of  four  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and, 
after  all,  he  "had  lived."  After  the  Louisville 
gambling-house  had  closed  and  the  sobered 
proprietor,  standing  with  back  turned  across 
the  room,  read  Ellinger's  poker  hand,  all  that 
Ellinger  could  say  was:  "And  God  Almighty 
gives  you  a  mind  like  that,  and  you  won't  go 
with  me  to  Cincinnati ! "  —where  gambling  was 

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Second  Nights 


still  going  on.  The  other's  chastening  began 
at  last  to  affect  him,  too.  Visiting  some  nymph 
of  his  acquaintance,  he  got  no  further  than 
talking  about  the  weather.  "It  cramps  my 
style!"  said  he.  "I  want  reform  all  right,  but 
I  want  to  fall  good  and  hard  first!" 

In  "The  Harvest  Moon"  Mr.  Thomas  dealt 
again  with  unseen  forces,  and  this  time  dis- 
carded shrieks  and  violence  and  even  his  usual 
broad  humor  and  depended  throughout  on  a 
conversational  tone  and  a  straight  appeal  to 
his  audience's  intelligence  and  human  sympa- 
thy. I  should  say  that  never  had  he  seemed  to 
go  about  his  work  with  such  assurance  as  in 
this  quiet  but  absorbing  presentation  of  the 
effects  of  suggestion  on  an  impressionable 
young  girl.  All  her  life  she  had  been  pursued 
with  the  notion  that  she  had  inherited  flighty, 
not  to  say  immoral,  tendencies  from  her  moth- 
er, who,  after  an  unhappy  married  life  in  this 
country,  had  disappeared  in  Paris.  The  ac- 
tion reveals  the  sinister  results  of  this  sugges- 
tion and  the  efforts,  finally  successful,  of  a 
guest  of  the  family,  a  French  playwright  and 
amateur  psychologist,  to  restore  her  self- 
respect  and  assist  her  to  "find  herself." 
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The  scene  was  Lenox,  Massachusetts,  and 
the  Harvard  professor,  the  French  amateur, 
and  the  whole  drift  and  manner  of  the  piece 
suggestive  of  Mr.  Thomas's  development.  At 
the  moment,  this  development  seems  to  have 
carried  his  ship  a  bit  out  of  the  wind.  Like 
the  journalist  who  sometimes  impairs  his 
original  usefulness  by  becoming  "too  serious" 
—spoils  a  good  reporter  to  make  a  bad  phi- 
losopher—he seems  blanketed  a  bit  by  his 
own  thoughtfulness.  General  ideas  absorb  him 
at  the  expense  of  the  special  technic  de- 
manded by  the  stage  until  some  of  his  more 
recent  plays  suggest  the  advisability  of  a  vaca- 
tion in  the  care-free  air  of  old-fashioned 
melodrama. 

Mr.  Richard  Harding  Davis,  on  the  other 
hand,  seems  able  to  maintain  in  the  most  un- 
toward circumstances  his  characteristic  just- 
off-the-yacht  point  of  view.  If  he  had  entered 
the  Forbidden  City  of  Lhassa  with  Colonel 
Younghusband's  expedition,  he  might  have 
been  profoundly  impressed  with  his  own  new- 
ness and  rawness  in  contrast  to  that  mysterious 
and  mouldering  old  civilization,  and  strained 
to  grasp  the  local  significance  of  things,  but 

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Second  Nights 


there  is  every  reason  to  assume  that  the  story 
he  sent  home  would  have  sounded  as  if  he  had 
just  stumbled  on  the  Grand  Lama's  temples 
while  riding  down  Fifth  Avenue  at  dinner  time 
in  a  hansom  cab,  with  front-row  theatre  tickets 
in  his  pocket. 

In  his  farce,  "The  Galloper,"  which  later, 
with  the  addition  of  music,  became  "The 
Yankee  Consul,"  he  turned  his  characteristic 
gaze — that  of  a  New  York  young-man-about- 
town — on  the  Greco-Turkish  war  of  '97,  and 
the  spectator  was  agreeably  startled  to  see 
young  Mr.  Copeland  Schuyler,  of  New  York,  a 
Casino  soubrette  known  as  'The  Human 
Fly,"  a  widow  from  Newark,  N.  J.,  who  owned 
a  department  store  and  two  breweries,  busying 
themselves  in  the  shadow  of  the  Parthenon. 
'The  Human  Fly"  described  to  a  recent  hus- 
band her  success  on  Broadway. 

"How  did  you  like  my  new  act?"  she  asked. 

"It  made  me  laugh,"  assented  the  husband. 

"Laugh!"  cried  the  young  woman.  "It  isn't 
meant  to  make  you  laugh.  When  you  see  a 
woman  turn  four  somersaults  in  the  air  and 
light  on  the  back  of  her  neck,  does  that  make 
you  laugh?" 

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"It  does,"  observed  the  husband,  "if  I'm 
paying  her  alimony." 

In  order  to  escape  from  this  enchantress, 
the  husband,  a  war  correspondent,  was  de- 
lighted to  lend  his  name  to  Schuyler,  who,  in 
turn,  was  equally  anxious  to  pretend  to  be  a 
war  correspondent  in  order  to  follow  to  the 
front  a  Red  Cross  nurse.  Mistaken  for  the  real 
correspondent,  who  had  once  fought  with  the 
Cretans,  Schuyler  was  carried  to  the  Piraeus 
on  the  shoulders  of  a  mob  of  admiring  Greeks 
and  compelled  to  make  a  speech. 

"Men  of  Athens!"  he  shouted,  "remember 
Marathon!  (Applause.)  Remember  Thermop- 
ylae! (Wild  applause.)  Remember  Andrew 
Jackson!  (Shrieks  and  roars  of  applause.)  What 
has  the  Republican  party  ever  done  for  Greece ! 
(Thunderous  outburst  of  enthusiasm.)" 

Clean,  boyish  fun  this,  aimed  at  the  ribs 
rather  than  the  cold  chambers  of  the  brain, 
and  as  characteristically  American  in  its  light- 
hearted  disregard  of  the  Old  World  as  "Inno- 
cents Abroad."  A  sort  of  boyishness,  innately 
kind  and  clean,  however  bumptiously  ex- 
pressed, is,  indeed,  characteristic  of  our  lighter 
plays.  Such  a  piece  as  the  British  farce,  "Mr. 

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Second  Nights 


Hopkinson,"  played  over  here  a  few  years  ago, 
could  never  have  been  written  here.  Hopkin- 
son was  a  servile,  beastly  little  cockney  who 
fell  into  a  fortune  and  tried  to  break  into  so- 
ciety. The  actor  who  played  the  part  managed 
so  nearly  to  suggest  a  human  pig  that  the  mere 
look  of  him  started  a  laugh,  and  the  clever, 
brassy  cynicism  of  the  titled  "bounders"  who 
led  him  on  and  bled  him  was  undeniably 
funny.  The  piece  enjoyed  some  success  here, 
but  it  was  almost  as  "foreign"  as  if  it  had 
come  from  China.  The  laughter  seemed  a  little 
shamefaced,  as  if  it  were  directed  at  a  lunatic 
or  a  drunken  woman,  and  ought  to  come,  not 
from  Americans  nor  the  English  in  their  more 
comprehensible  moments,  but  from  an  audi- 
ence made  up  of  those  raw-boned,  Yahoo-like 
creatures,  with  horse  teeth,  pith  helmets,  and 
sailor  straw  hats,  which  "  Le  Rire"  or  "Jugend" 
presents  as  typical  of  the  British  Isles. 

Mr.  Ade  could  not  have  written  such  a  piece 
though  the  full  force  of  his  Indiana  irony  were 
engaged  in  the  fray.  The  most  craven  of  his 
victims  would  yet  inspire  a  not  unkindly  smile 
and  seem,  with  all  his  absurdities,  to  be  em- 
barked with  us  on  a  common  adventure.  Even 

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Mr.  Cohan,  noisily  celebrating  cheapness  and 
vulgarity,  is  yet  a  sort  of  poet  in  his  way.  There 
is  something  nai've  and  whole-souled  in  his 
frank  materialism.  He  speaks  from  the  heart 
and  chants  of  "putting  it  over,"  getting  the 
better  of  the  "rubes,"  collecting  a  "roll,"  and 
so  on,  as  the  lark  sings  to  the  sun. 

The  light-heartedness  and  apparent  ap- 
proval with  which  "Get-Rich-Quick  Walling- 
ford"  set  forth  the  notion  that  it  makes  little 
difference  how  you  make  money  provided  you 
do  make  it  might  seem  as  shocking  to  an  En- 
glishman and  characteristic  of  Yankee  "cute- 
ness"  as  "Mr.  Hopkinson"  seemed  cruel  to 
us.  Wallingford's  point  of  view  is  more  com- 
mon than  most  of  our  regenerate  would  care 
to  admit,  but  not  more  American  than  the 
more  humane  one  expressed  in  Mr.  Winchell 
Smith's  "The  Fortune  Hunter."  In  this 
amusing  piece  a  gilded  city  youth  went  down 
to  a  little  Pennsylvania  town  with  the  inten- 
tion of  marrying  an  heiress.  There  always  is  an 
heiress  in  such  a  town,  a  friend  told  him;  the 
eligible  men  go  away  to  the  city,  and  you  have 
only  to  wear  becoming  but  quiet  clothes,  ap- 
pear studious  and  dependable,  and  the  girls 

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Second  Nights 


do  the  rest.  They  did  in  this  case,  but  mean- 
while the  young  man  had  come  to  like  work, 
turned  the  shabby  village  drug  store  into  a 
dazzling  and  profitable  palace,  and  acquired 
so  many  sterling  virtues  that,  of  course,  it 
wasn't  the  uppish  banker's  daughter  who 
finally  captured  him,  but  the  quiet  Cinderella 
who  had  helped  him  tend  shop. 

The  kindly  human  feeling,  the  approval  of 
hard  work,  thrift,  and  what  are  occasionally 
called  the  bourgeois  virtues — the  American- 
ism, in  short — of  this  little  comedy,  was  the 
inspiration  of  "The  Man  from  Home"  which, 
in  spite  of  obvious  defects,  seemed  to  me  one 
of  the  significant  American  plays  of  recent 
years. 

One  not  infrequently  hears  the  Easterner, 
or  amiable  foreigners  new  to  our  land,  speak  of 
the  "Middle"  West  as  a  region  beyond  the 
pale.  Such  persons  can  understand  living  in 
New  York,  or  roughing  it  in  the  picturesque 
"far"  West,  among  grizzlies  and  buffalo,  for 
quite  nice  people,  English  younger  sons  and  so 
on,  do  that.  But  that  one  could  exist  happily 
in  Columbus,  Ohio;  or  Indianapolis,  Indiana; 
or  Cedar  Rapids,  Iowa,  is  beyond  them  alto- 
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gether,  and  in  planning  to  cross  the  continent 
they  speak  of  the  region  between  the  Alle- 
ghenies  and  the  Rockies  as  one  would  speak 
of  that  part  of  a  journey  consumed  in  passing 
through  tunnels  or  a  fog. 

Curiously  enough,  the  natives  of  this  region 
like  it,  return  to  it  as  "God's  country,"  per- 
sist, amidst  pleasures  and  palaces,  in  regard- 
ing it  as  home.  Mr.  George  Ade  might  travel 
to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  as,  indeed,  he  has  done, 
but  would  "come  from  Indiana"  were  he  in 
Paris  or  Timbuctoo.  Mr.  Marshall,  in  leaving 
Indiana  to  become  Vice-President,  is  besought 
in  poetry  by  Mr.  Meredith  Nicholson  not  to 
forget  that  he  is  a  Hoosier,  nor  desert  the 
comic  muse — to  remain,  even  in  Washington, 
simple,  humorous,  and  kind.  In  short,  here  are 
people  who  feel  that  they  have  something 
which  more  than  makes  up  for  flat  land,  new 
paint,  and  lack  of  the  storied  urn.  In  his  novel, 
'The  Gentleman  from  Indiana,"  Mr.  Tar- 
kington  tried  to  explain  this  feeling  and  took 
pains  to  choose  as  his  scene  one  of  those  very 
towns,  at  which  the  Pullman  car  passengers, 
looking  up  from  their  novels,  shudder  as  the 
limited  whizzes  by.  In  'The  Man  from 

[  309  1 


Second  Nights 


Home,"  written  in  collaboration  with  Mr. 
Harry  Wilson,  the  message  was  repeated  in 
the  theatre. 

The  play  introduced  us  to  Miss  Ethel  Simp- 
son and  her  brother  Horace,  who  were  from 
Kokomo,  Indiana,  but  doing  their  best  to  for- 
get it.  They  were  at  Sorrento,  Italy,  and 
ashamed  of  their  own  country.  They  had 
hyphenated  their  father's  middle  name  to  his 
last,  and  when  some  one  addressed  young 
Horace  as  "Mr.  Simpson"  instead  of  "Mr. 
Granger-Simpson"  he  affected  not  to  under- 
stand. When  asked  if  he  were  not  an  American 
he  would  answer,  "I  was  born  in  the  United 
States,"  and  explain  that  he  had  not  been 
there  for  many  years. 

Ethel  was  engaged  to  the  Hon.  Almeric 
St.  Aubyn,  who  was  scarcely  more  than  the 
conventional  silly  Englishman  of  musical  com- 
edy, but  poor  Ethel  was  too  hypnotized  by 
the  romantic  thought  of  ancestors  who  had 
fought  at  Crecy  and  Agincourt  to  see  him  as 
he  was.  The  young  lord  wished  a  settlement  of 
one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  pounds,  and 
she  and  Horace  were  but  too  delighted. 

Before  the  marriage  could  take  place,  how- 


The  Great  American  Play" 


ever,  Miss  Simpson's  guardian  must  give  his 
consent.  This  brought  Daniel  Voorhees  Pike 
to  Italy.  Pike  was  the  guardian — the  man  from 
home.  He  had  known  her  father  and  he  could 
not  believe  that  that  father's  daughter  need 
pay  any  man  seven  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
dollars  to  get  him  to  marry  her.  He  supposed 
that  the  settlement  must  be  the  Earl's  idea, 
that,  of  course,  the  young  man  himself  couldn't 
dream  of  such  a  thing.  It  was  impossible  for 
him  to  comprehend,  as  Ethel  pointed  out,  how 
these  things  were  regarded  by  a  man  of  the 
world.  His  ingenuous  but  keen  remarks,  the 
sordidness  of  the  sham  "gentlefolk"  into  whose 
clutches  the  Simpsons  had  fallen,  the  touch- 
ing fashion  in  which  Ethel  idealized  her  alli- 
ance with  "a  noble  house"-— just  as  other 
American  heiresses  have  done — provided  ex- 
cellent comedy. 

The  man  from  Indiana  was  not,  however,  a 
merely  impersonal  advocate  of  the  ideals  of 
living  approved  in  Kokomo.  He  was  in  love 
with  Miss  Granger-Simpson  himself.  For  years 
he  had  had  her  picture  on  his  bureau  and  in  his 
heart,  and  he  had  a  fine  old  house  on  Main 
Street,  with  a  big  front  lawn  and  trees — in 

t  3ii  ] 


Second  Nights 


which  he  dreamt  Ethel  Simpson  would  some 
day  be  sitting  at  the  piano  singing  his  favorite 
song,  "Sweet  Genevieve."  His  chances  seemed 
slim,  however,  as  the  curtain  went  down  on  the 
first  act,  and  the  Hon.  Almeric  having  hey- 
whatted  himself  away,  Pike  asked, "  If  they  pay 
seven  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars  for 
that,  I  wonder  what  they  pay  for  a  real  man!" 

The  ensuing  intrigue  need  not  be  recalled 
—the  upshot  was  that  the  Hon.  Almeric 
proved  too  insufferable  at  last  even  for  the 
young  Indiana  girl's  incorrigible  idealism,  and 
the  whole  crew  of  "gentlefolk"  were  finally 
sent  packing.  The  disillusioned  Miss  Simpson, 
having  said  farewell  finally  and  forever  to  the 
man  from  home,  sat  down  at  the  piano  and 
began  to  sing  "Sweet  Genevieve."  Mr.  Pike 
was  making  for  the  house  with  all  speed  as  the 
curtain  went  down. 

As  dramatic  art  "The  Man  from  Home" 
was  not  important,  but  as  a  statement  of 
faith,  an  explanation,  in  a  way,  of  what  this 
mysterious  thing  might  be  that  makes  life  in 
the  Middle  Western  deserts  worth  while,  it 
was  very  important,  indeed.  To  be  sure,  it 
was  provincial,  as  all  of  us  must  be,  in  one 
[  312  ] 


The  Great  American  Play 


sort  or  another,  unless  we  be  mere  men  without 
a  country.  The  fake  gentlefolk  against  whom 
the  simple  virtues  of  Mr.  Pike  stood  out  so 
strongly  were  scarcely  more  than  caricatures; 
as  a  stand-up  trial  of  kind  hearts  and  coronets, 
aristocracy  scarcely  got  a  run  for  its  money. 

Yet  even  this,  perhaps,  was  less  by  way  of 
humbling  the  Hon.  Almeric  than  of  throwing  a 
rosier  glow  about  the  young  girl  from  Kokomo. 
The  nobility  he  had  lost,  in  fact,  still  lived  in 
her  dreams — there  was  pathos  in  her  wistful 
illusions.  And  through  the  man  from  home 
himself,  uncouth,  dependable,  humorous,  and 
kind,  not  merely  Daniel  Voorhees  Pike,  but 
hundreds  of  humdrum  little  inland  towns  were 
speaking.  Behind  the  play  was  the  conviction 
their  people  live  by  and  would  fight  for,  yet 
could  not  put  into  words. 

It  was  important  that  it  should  be  expressed 
—it  is  by  such  kindly  ministrations  that  art 
makes  every-day  life  richer  and  more  inter- 
esting— yet  "The  Man  from  Home"  was 
special  pleading,  for  all  that.  It  did  not 
give  that  2+2=4,  thus-it-was-and-could-not- 
be-otherwise  feeling  one  gets  from  the  less  top- 
ical, more  impersonal  kinds  of  work. 

[  313  ] 


Second  Nights 


A  Spaniard  or  an  Austrian  might  have  seen 
little  in  it.  He  would  have  got  much  more  from 
Mr.  William  Vaughn  Moody's  "The  Great 
Divide."  The  theme  of  this,  while  it  sprang 
naturally  from  American  soil,  was  more  uni- 
versal in  application.  The  great  divide  was  not 
merely  the  Rocky  Mountains,  but  the  line 
drawn  everywhere  between  nature  and  con- 
vention, between  the  daring  to  do  and  the  fear 
of  what  has  been  done. 

The  woman  in  the  play,  Ruth  Jordan,  came 
from  Millford  Corners,  Massachusetts.  The 
Jordan  house  was  of  the  old-fashioned  New 
England  pattern,  and  from  the  walls  of  its 
sitting-room  the  Puritan  ancestors  of  the  fam- 
ily stared  down  a  thin-lipped  warning  against 
being  too  happy  in  a  world  built  for  self- 
abnegation  and  sacrifice.  The  young  woman 
and  her  brother  went  out  to  Arizona  to  live  on 
a  ranch  in  the  Gila  Desert  country. 

Like  many  a  scrupulously  civilized  person 
before  her,  Ruth  Jordan  seemed  to  become  a 
new  creature.  She  looked  on  those  magic  lights 
and  colors,  stretched  out  her  arms  toward  the 
magnificent  spaces,  and  felt  as  if  for  the  first 
time  in  her  life  she  were  free.  She  began  almost 

1 314] 


The  Great  American  Play 


to  fear  that  some  punishment  must  follow  this 
undeserved  happiness,  while  little  Polly  Jor- 
dan, Philip's  wife,  shook  her  head  and  said 
that  if  the  time  ever  came  when  the  thrill  and 
happy  yearning  of  this  new  existence  should 
run,  slap-up,  against  the  rock  of  Ruth's  essen- 
tial Puritanism,  then  there  would  be  trouble. 

As  yet  there  was  no  man  in  the  case — only 
young  Doctor  Newbury,  who  had  grown  up 
with  Ruth  and  gone  to  school  with  her.  He 
was  Safe  and  Sane,  as  the  Republicans  used 
to  say,  and  loved  Ruth  earnestly.  One  had  but 
to  look  at  him  and  hear  his  honest,  vaguely 
reproachful  voice  to  know  that  he  would  be 
just  as  earnest  and  just  as  good  no  matter 
where  you  put  him — at  the  North  Pole,  in  Rio 
de  Janeiro,  up  in  a  balloon.  He  was  a  fine  fel- 
low, but  had  no  fourth  dimensions.  Ruth  ad- 
mired Newbury  and  wished  he  could  make 
her  fall  in  love  with  him.  But,  as  she  confided 
to  Polly  Jordan — and  charmingly  authentic 
it  sounded  as  spoken  by  Miss  Anglin— "he's 
so  finished!  He's  all  done.  I  don't  want  a  man 
who's  finished." 

One  night  a  ranchman  broke  his  leg  and  the 
other  three  rode  away  for  the  doctor  and  left 

[  315 1 


Second  Nights 


Ruth  alone.  Three  men,  on  their  way  home 
from  a  dance,  drunk,  saw  her  light.They  waited 
until  she  had  put  it  out,  then  smashed  in  the 
door.  With  her  back  to  the  wall,  and  two  of  the 
men — a  Mexican  and  a  sodden  bronco-buster 
— snarling  and  ready  to  shake  dice  for  her,  she 
threw  herself  on  the  mercy  of  the  third,  the 
best  man.  If  he  would  save  her  from  the  others 
and  from  himself,  make  her  his  wife,  she  would 
go  with  him.  "On  the  level,  and  not  peach,  not 
desert  him?"  —be  what  he  had  been  looking 
for  all  these  years,  the  woman  that  somehow 
he  felt  he  had  found  the  moment  he  caught 
sight  of  her  standing  at  bay  there  in  the  candle- 
light ?  He  was  quite  sober  now. 

4  Yes,"  she  said,  burying  her  face.  She  would 
stick  by  her  word.  She  was  enough  of  a  Puri- 
tan for  that.  So  Stephen  Ghent  pulled  the 
chain  of  nuggets  from  his  neck  and  bought  off 
the  Mexican  with  that;  he  and  the  other  man 
went  outside  and  shot  at  each  other  and 
Ghent  came  back.  While  he  was  dictating  a 
note  which  Ruth  was  to  leave,  telling  her 
brother  that  she  had  gone  away  to  be  married, 
Ghent  walked  across  the  room  and  stood  with 
his  back  to  her.  He  had  left  his  gun  beside  her 


The  Great  American  Play" 


elbow.  She  saw  it  and,  trembling,  lifted  the 
muzzle  slowly  to  her  temple,  but  the  love  of 
life  was  too  strong.  "I  cannot!  I  cannot!"  she 
sobbed  and  buried  her  face  in  her  arms.  Then 
Ghent  took  down  her  saddle  and  bridle,  and, 
motioning  to  the  door,  followed  her  out  into 
the  night. 

At  first  it  seemed  almost  as  if  this  grim 
bargain  might  bring  a  kind  of  happiness.  He 
treated  her  with  gentleness  and  a  sort  of  rude 
chivalry,  and  when  she  saw  him,  strong,  sure, 
riding  down  into  the  arroyos  and  ahead  of  her 
through  the  gaunt  canyons,  something  like  an 
answering  confidence  and  loyalty  rose  in  her 
own  heart. 

They  came  at  last  to  the  buried  valley  in 
which  he  had  struck  gold  and  settled  down  to 
work  the  claim.  And  then  came  the  revulsion, 
and  all  her  Puritanism  rushed  back  and  sub- 
merged her.  All  the  quintessential  bitterness 
which  the  "nerves"  of  the  highly  organized 
modern  woman  could  inject  into  the  raw  dis- 
tress of  the  situation  stung  her  with  its  white- 
hot  fire.  The  more  he  tried  to  do  for  her  the 
more  hateful  he  became.  Whenever  she  looked 
at  her  husband,  behind  him  she  seemed  to  see 

[  317 1 


Second  Nights 


the  figure  of  that  drunken  animal  who  had 
broken  into  her  room.  "My  price  has  risen!" 
she  flung  out  bitterly,  when  Ghent,  in  his 
bashful  fashion,  let  fall  the  news  that  he  had 
been  planning  a  fine  house  for  her.  It  was 
going  to  cost,  far  away  as  they  were  from 
everything,  forty  thousand  dollars.  Every 
cent  that  he  gave  her  she  kept  apart,  not 
spending  it.  While  he  was  working  his  claim 
she  slaved  secretly  over  Indian  baskets  and 
blankets,  sold  them  to  tourists,  and  turned  the 
money  over  to  the  Mexican  who  had  sold  his 
share  in  her  for  the  string  of  nuggets.  And  at 
last,  when  the  debt  was  paid  to  the  last  penny 
and  the  chain  redeemed,  she  flung  it  at  her 
husband's  feet  and  with  her  brother,  who  had 
discovered  her  at  last,  went  back  to  the  East. 
There  we  see  her,  in  the  next  and  last  act, 
in  the  old  sitting-room,  under  the  grim  por- 
traits of  her  ancestors.  The  Jordan  money 
has  been  lost  in  the  ranch  venture,  Ruth  is  a 
mother.  And  here,  presently,  in  the  midst  of 
worry  and  unrest,  Ghent  appears.  He  had  fol- 
lowed by  the  next  train,  bought  the  ruined 
ranch,  saved  the  family,  and  been  waiting  his 
time  in  the  neighborhood.  It  only  twists  the 

[318 1 


The  Great  American  Play 


steel  in  the  wound.  "So  my  price  has  risen!" 
Ruth  flings  out — once  he  had  bought  her,  now 
he  must  buy  her  family. 

Ghent  stands  up  and  takes  it  as  he  used  to 
during  those  wretched  months  in  the  moun- 
tains. "It's  those  fellows  that  are  fooling 
you,"  he  says,  motioning  toward  the  portraits. 
Everything  wrong  in  their  meeting  was  burned 
away — for  him — when  their  eyes  first  met.  He 
has  paid  for  her  not  only  with  a  "trumpery 
chain  but  with  the  heart  in  my  breast,  do  you 
hear?  That's  one  thing  you  can't  throw  back 
at  me — the  man  you've  made  of  me,  the  life 
and  the  meaning  of  life  you've  showed  me  the 
way  to." 

But  he  knows  what  she's  thinking  for  all 
that— "wrong  is  wrong,  from  the  moment  it 
happens  until  the  crack  of  doom  and  all  the 
angels  of  heaven,  working  overtime,  can't 
make  it  less  or  different  by  a  hair.  That  seems 
to  be  the  law.  I've  learned  it  hard,  but  I  guess 
I've  learned  it.  I've  seen  it  written  in  moun- 
tain letters  across  the  continent  of  this  life- 
Done  is  done,  and  lost  is  lost,  and  smashed  to 
hell  is  smashed  to  hell.  We  fuss  and  potter 
and  patch  up  ...  but  it's  been  a  losing  game 

[  319  1 


Second  Nights 


with  you  from  the  first.  You  belong  here  and 
I  belong  out  yonder— beyond  the  Rockies, 
beyond — the  Great  Divide." 

And  leaning  there  on  the  table,  her  face 
buried  in  her  arms,  the  truth  comes  through  to 
her  at  last.  Out  of  the  sin  committed  this  man 
has  grown  steadily  stronger  and  gentler  and 
better;  she  has  grown  only  narrower  and 
harder  and  more  weak.  Wrapping  herself  in 
words  and  hand-me-down  conceptions  of  life 
and  its  duties,  she  has  done  her  best  to  destroy 
life,  trample  under  foot  its  happiness  and 
beauty.  He  has  just  begun  to  live.  The  wages 
of  sin  are  suffering  and  he  had  suffered,  but 
they  are  not  necessarily  death.  The  moment  of 
sin  may  be  the  moment  of  revelation,  of  the 
beginning  of  a  new  life.  And  she  rises  and  takes 
up  the  chain  of  nuggets  which  he  had  laid  on 
the  table  and  hangs  it  round  his  neck. 

When  "The  Great  Divide"  was  first  played 
by  Miss  Anglin  and  Mr.  Henry  Miller,  in  the 
autumn  of  1906,  it  seemed  to  many  that  the 
"great  American  play"  had  at  last  arrived. 
It  had  breadth  and  sweep,  both  geographical 
and  spiritual,  and  combined  force  on  the  one 
hand,  and  lyrical  beauty  on  the  other,  with 

[  320  ] 


The  Great  American  Play' 


the  satisfying  restraint  and  simplicity  of  one 
trained  in  the  use  of  words.  A  new  sort  of 
American  was  in  the  theatre — a  scholar  who 
spoke  every-day  talk,  a  playwright  who  could 
turn  melodrama  into  fine  and  mounting  poetry. 

That  Mr.  Moody  was  more  poet  than  dra- 
matist was  suggested  by  his  next  play,  "The 
Faith  Healer,"  with  which  ended,  all  too  soon, 
both  his  work  and  his  life.  He  was  a  man 
of  one  play,  but  one  of  distinguished  quality, 
that  deserved  to  take  its  place  beside  the  best 
of  Fitch,  Augustus  Thomas,  Bronson  Howard, 
and  James  A.  Herne. 

Guessing  the  probable  source  of  the  great 
American  play  is  a  game  which  each  may  play 
to  his  taste — genius  comes  when  it  comes  and 
blows  where  it  listeth.  In  the  small  hours  of 
that  night  at  Denver  in  1908,  when  the  Demo- 
crats nominated  Bryan  for  the  third  time, 
somewhere  in  that  delirium  of  band  music, 
howling,  and  oratory  which  dragged  on  until 
the  dawn  came  up  out  of  the  prairies,  Mr. 
Augustus  Thomas  arose  as  a  delegate  from 
New  York  to  address  the  convention.  I  well 
remember  the  sight  of  that  ruddy,  bullet- 
headed  face,  the  cheering  sound,  after  the 

[  321  ] 


Second  Nights 


strange  aeolian  noises  that  had  preceded  them, 
of  those  terse  authoritative  words.  The  author 
of  "Arizona"  fulfilled  at  that  moment,  better 
perhaps  than  any  of  our  other  play-writers 
could  have  done,  the  American  notion  that  the 
artist  should  also  be  a  good  citizen.  And  the 
"great"  American  play,  one  suspects,  is  likely 
to  come  from  some  such  type  of  man — not 
from  the  ivory  tower  nor  "Broadway,"  but 
closer  to  the  firing  line. 


[  322  ] 


XVI 

SOME    LADIES    WHO 
DANCE 


THE  helpless  victim  of  an  age  of  steam- 
engines  and  Broadway  musical  comedies  ar- 
rived at  the  Plaza  Hotel  at  the  close  of  a  win- 
try afternoon  when  Fifth  Avenue  was  at  its 
brightest  and  —  as  the  barbarians  would  say- 
its  best.  He  was  to  appear  before  Miss  Isa- 
dora Duncan  at  six  o'clock. 

Miss  Duncan,  as  it  is  perhaps  needless  to 
explain,  is  the  restorer  of  the  lost  art  of  danc- 
ing as  it  was  known  in  the  days  when  the 
world  was  young  and  the  Greek  vases  were  be- 
ing made.  As  one  of  her  appreciators  has  said: 
"It  is  far  back,  deep  down  in  the  centuries, 
that  one's  spirit  passes  when  Isadora  Duncan 
dances  ;  back  to  the  very  morning  of  the  world, 
when  the  movements  of  the  human  body  were 
one  with  the  wind  and  sea;  when  the  gesture 
of  a  woman's  arm  was  as  the  unfolding  of  a 
rose  petal,  the  pressure  of  her  foot  upon  the  sod, 
as  the  drifting  of  a  leaf  to  earth.  Your  heart 

[  323  I 


Second  Nights 


beats  and  your  eyes  are  moist  and  you  know 
that  such  perfect  moments  are  years  apart, 
even  in  happy  lives."  .  .  . 

"But  why?"  demanded  Miss  Duncan  wear- 
ily. "Why  put  us  together?  One  has  respect  for 
Mademoiselle  Genee.  She  has  trained  for 
many  years  and  held  an  honorable  place  in 
her  profession.  She  is  an  excellent  acrobat. 
But  if  you  are  considering  an  art.  .  .  .  And 
as  for  some  faker  who  walks  around  the  stage 
in  an  imitation  Hindoo  costume.  .  .  .  Well— 
you  wouldn't  write  an  article  about  Sir  Henry 
Irving  and  some  knockabout  comedian  at  the 
music-halls?" 

The  condemned  man  hastened  to  assure 
Miss  Duncan  that  he  would  not.  He  didn't 
originate  the  idea.  It  was  the  work  of  a  band 
of  editorial  conspirators,  thinking  probably  of 
the  absurd  public  and  what  it  read.  Unrelated 
things  were  grouped  together  for  purposes  of 
convenience,  contrast,  goodness  knows  what, 
under  titles,  rough,  crude,  if  you  will,  yet— 

"Anyway,"  he  suggested  brightly,  "mightn't 
Sir  Henry  Irving  and  the  music-hall  comedian 
be  grouped — 'Different  ways  of  spending  an 


evening ! ' ' 


[  324  1 


Some  Ladies  Who  Dance 


Miss  Duncan  was  too  bored  to  reply.  Reclin- 
ing somewhat  after  the  manner  of  Madame 
Recamier,  she  wearily  surveyed  the  spacious 
and  elegant  apartment  done  in  the  fashion 
of  that  age  of  the  Louis  in  which  the  hate- 
ful art  of  the  ballet  originated.  At  the  piano 
to  the  left  a  young  Harvard  man  had  just 
ceased  playing  the  "CEdipus"  music  of  Doc- 
tor Paine.  To  the  right  sat  one  of  our  lead- 
ing poets  wrapped  in  profound  thought.  Over 
her  clustered  curls  Miss  Duncan  wore  a  sort 
of  shirred  cap  or  indoor  sunbonnet,  and  softly 
shimmering  drapery  fell  from  the  low-cleft 
neck  to  the  pale-blue  sandals,  with  all  that 
knowledge  of  form,  line,  and  rhythm  which  is 
so  exquisitely  revealed  in  her  dancing. 

Fragonard  or  Watteau  might  have  pre- 
served some  of  the  unpremeditated  beauty  of 
that  picture,  but  it  shall  not  be  attempted 
here.  I  mention  it  only  because  for  the  first  ten 
or  fifteen  minutes  during  which  the  culprit 
waited  to  be  discovered  it  was  the  only  com- 
panionship he  had.  He  might  have  been  the 
paper  on  the  wall — nay,  would  that  he  had— 
for  toward  that  most  of  the  time  Miss  Duncan 
lifted  absorbed  and  almost  interested  eyes. 

t  325  ] 


Second  Nights 


"They  send  people  to  me,"  and  with  a  sort 
of  wistful  despair  her  eyes  drifted  for  an 
instant  across  his  huddled  form,  "who  know 
nothing  of  dancing,  nothing  of  art,  nothing- 
Why  don't  they  send  a  sculptor?  He  might  un- 
derstand what  I  am  aiming  at,  what  I  have 
been  working  all  these  years  to  do.  One  comes 
back  to  one's  own  country  and  one  hopes  for 
a  little  sympathy  and  recognition,  and  one 
either  isn't  noticed  at  all  or  you  write  nothing 
but  twaddle.  .  .  .  Yes,  there  is  one  person 
in  Philadelphia  and  one  on  the  Boston  Tran- 
script. They  write  beautifully  of  my  art." 

The  poet  stirred  uneasily,  and  Miss  Dun- 
can, inclining  slightly  in  his  direction,  vouch- 
safed a  forgiving  smile. 

"Of  course — you  .  .  .  But  you,"  and  she 
sighed,  "you  write  beautifully  about  any- 
thing." 

Again  there  was  silence,  and  presently  Miss 
Duncan  returned  to  the  consideration  of  other 
dancers. 

'Three  years  ago  that  girl  came  to  my  dress- 
ing-room with  tears  in  her  eyes  and  begged  me 
to  give  her  a  few  suggestions — while  she  was 
taking  notes  on  my  costumes.  She  knows 
nothing  of  dancing,  nothing  of  my  art,  but 

[  326  ] 


Some  Ladies  Who  Dance 


there  are  millions  behind  her,  she  is  pushed,  she 
goes  to  Germany — of  course,  the  Germans  un- 
derstand my  work,  and  she  accomplishes  noth- 
ing but  the  reclame,  and  now  I  understand  she 
is  coming  over  here  and  your  papers  will  take 
her  up — -money  can  do  anything.  And  here  is 
Loie  Fuller — she  scrapes  up  whoever  she  can 
find — girls  who  didn't  know  there  was  such  a 
thing  as  dancing  until  they  began  to  imitate 
me  five  or  six  years  ago.  One  works  for  years 
to  perfect  some  one  artistic  thing  like  that  of 
merging  one  motion  into  another,  but  what 
difference  does  it  make  ?  Who  sees  it  ?  Nobody 
understands." 

The  interviewer,  thinking  he  saw  an  open- 
ing, asked  Miss  Duncan  if  she  wouldn't  point 
out  some  of  the  most  obvious  things  that  he 
wouldn't  understand. 

"I  suppose,"  answered  Miss  Duncan  wearily 
"you  might  begin  with  architecture.  Of  course, 
you  have  no  architecture  here— 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,"  he  protested  weakly. 
"It  seems  to  me  that — I  mean  to  say— 

"In  the  last  ten  years,  Isadora,"  inter- 
rupted the  poet  soothingly.  "Really,  you  know 
there  has  been  a — a— 

"After  all,  there's  but  one  art,"  Miss  Dun- 

l  327  ] 


Second  Nights 


can  lifted  her  hand  with  fingers  slightly  out- 
stretched as  if  to  symbolize  various  branches 
of  art  radiating  from  a  central  source.  "Am  I 
not  right?"  And  she  looked  for  confirmation 
to  the  poet,  who  nodded  vigorously.  "You  go 
to  the  Parthenon.  That's  perfect.  It's  admitted 
• — it's  final— it's  there — form,  line,  rhythm. 
And  that  is  my  dancing.  Ask  Rodin  how  much 
inspiration  he  would  get  from  a  premiere  dan- 
seuse  standing  on  the  end  of  her  toe  ?  Could  you 
imagine  a  ballet  in  the  Parthenon.  And  yet  I 
heard  Bach  played  in  the  Parthenon."  Again 
Miss  Duncan  turned  to  the  poet  as  to  one  who 
spoke  her  own  language.  "It  was  quite— quite 
perfect,  you  know.  The  rhythm  of  the  music 
and  the  rhythm  of  the  columns — the— 

r'Yes!"  agreed  the  poet  eagerly. 

The  condemned  man  pressed  his  hand  to 
his  low  but  throbbing  forehead. 

"How,  Miss  Duncan,"  he  began  desperately 
"did  you  first  happen  to  begin  your  work?" 

She  regarded  him  with  a  wan  smile. 

"I  suppose,"  she  sighed,  "I  wanted  to  be- 
come an  artist." 

"It  was  in  California,  wasn't  it?"  And  the 
poet,  who  was  very  kind  really  and  did  all 
[  328  ] 


Some  Ladies  Who  Dance 


that  he  could  to  help,  suggested  that  it  would 
be  enchanting  to  see  her  dance  under  those 
great  redwood  trees.  "You  know  them,  of 
course,"  he  hinted,  but  Miss  Duncan  made  no 
reply. 

"I  mean/'  gasped  the  outsider,  "you  have 
done  so  much.  You  have  started  so  many  imi- 
tators that  one  would  like  to  know  how  the 
idea  came  to  you." 

"I  suppose,"  said  Miss  Duncan,  "it  was  a 
curious  idea  for  a  mere  feminine  person  to 
have.  Perhaps,  for  a  mere  feminine  person, 
I  may  have  had  a  little  intelligence.  Doubt- 
less that  was  quite  absurd.  Some  day  a  mascu- 
line person  may  take  up  my  work  and  ac- 
complish something.  I  haven't  the  strength.  I 
started  a  school  so  that  some  children  might 
be  trained  up  to  carry  the  art  on  when  I  am 
too  old.  When  they  were  fifteen  they  broke 
their  agreements,  and  now  they're  dancing  all 
over  Europe  as  'pupils  of  Isadora  Duncan.' 
Even  the  Petersburg  ballet  imitates  me — ah!" 
Miss  Duncan  shuddered  at  the  thought.  "I 
do  a  motion  once — like  that,"  and  she  waved 
her  arms;  "they  do  it — fast — a  thousand 
times!" 

[  329  I 


Second  Nights 


"An  outrage!"  declared  the  poet. 

"One  expects — in  one's  own  country — a 
little  recognition— 

"I  should  think,"  ventured  the  condemned 
man,  "that  Carnegie  Hall  yesterday  after- 
noon, packed  from  orchestra  to  roof,  would  be 
a  sort  of  recognition.  .  .  ." 

Miss  Duncan  sank  back,  lifted  and  dropped 
her  hands  wearily. 

"Oh!"  she  said.  "One  always  has  the  au- 
dience!" 

The  visitor  staggered  to  his  feet  and  mum- 
bled a  few  stumbling  words  of  farewell  in 
which  the  fatal  word  "deserve"  was  used. 

"Deserve!"  cried  Miss  Duncan,  and  the 
kindly  poet  sprang  to  the  rescue  again. 

"Isadora,"  he  said  earnestly,  "I  don't  be- 
lieve you  realize  how  deep  and — and  really 
beautiful — the    appreciation    of — of   your— 
but  the  door  closed  behind  him  then  and  the 
condemned  man  was  free. 

The  difference  between  Mademoiselle  Ge- 
nee's  art  and  Miss  Duncan's  is  the  difference 
between  classicism  and  romanticism — between 
French  heels  and  sandals  or  Racine  and  Shel- 

[  330  ] 


Some  Ladies  Who  Dance 


ley,  or  Louis  XIV  and  the  great  god  Pan.  A 
•premiere  danseuse  is,  so  to  speak,  the  priestess 
of  an  ancient  ritual.  There  may  be  doubt  as  to 
how  well  she  does  certain  things,  but  there  is 
no  doubt  whatever  as  to  precisely  how  they 
should  be  done. 

11  People  talk  about  new  steps,"  smiled  Miss 
Genee.  "There  are  no  new  steps.  There  can't 
be.  There  can  be  arrangements  of  steps,  but 
no  new  ones." 

It  is  a  code  as  fixed  as  the  duello.  Even  its 
language  is  the  quaint  old  French.  To  those  of 
Miss  Duncan's  way  of  thinking  it  is  dead  as 
sheet-iron  stencil.  And  yet  if  Miss  Genee  is 
anything  at  all  she  is  the  embodiment  of 
gayety  and  unconscious  joy.  Dramatic  re- 
porters of  two  continents  have  perished  trying 
to  express  her  inexpressible  lightness  of  move- 
ment, the  happy  flashes  of  her  hands  and 
smile — this  spring  song  in  pink  slippers,  this 
lark  in  ballet  skirts. 

And  we  come  then  to  the  astonishing  con- 
clusion that  a  pinched  and  academic  dance 
may  be  danced  with  a  glad  Greek  spirit,  just 
as  a  glad  Greek  dance  may,  doubtless,  be 
danced  with  a  pinched  and  academic  spirit; 


Second  Nights 


and  that  joy  itself  is  a  matter  not  merely  of 
form,  line,  and  rhythm,  but  of  the  human 
heart. 

Off  the  stage  Miss  Genee  is  a  tight  little, 
bright  little  body,  with  a  very  sedate,  clean- 
cut  way  of  talking  and  a  quick,  boyish  laugh. 
There  are  no  amethystine  twilights  about  Miss 
Genee.  The  only  "atmosphere"  in  her  sitting- 
room  the  day  I  was  there  was  the  brisk  noon 
sunshine  and  the  cheerful  roar  of  Broadway 
several  stories  below.  There  were  a  few  pictures 
of  her  friends  on  the  mantel,  a  large  signed  one 
of  Mr.  Roosevelt  on  the  piano,  and  as  she  rose 
from  her  writing-desk  in  a  severely  plain  blue 
dress  with  a  high  collar  she  might  have  been  a 
trim  little  English  governess. 

Miss  Genee  is  a  Dane  and  she  began  to 
dance  when  she  was  nine  years  old. 

"I  went  to  my  auntie  and  uncle  then.  No- 
body on  my  side  of  the  family  had  anything  to 
do  with  dancing  or  the  theatre,  but  uncle  was 
a  teacher  of  dancing  and  he  had  his  own  thea- 
tre in  Stettin.  Maybe  that  helped  me  along, 
because  I  was  leading  a  ballet  at  fifteen.  We 
went  to  the  Royal  Theatre  in  Berlin  and  then 
to  the  opera  in  Munich,  and  then  I  should  have 

[  332  ] 


Some  Ladies  Who  Dance 


gone  to  Vienna,  but  I  went  to  London  for  six 
weeks  and  stayed  ten  years  and — and  here  I 
am!" 

It  was  only  in  1908  that  Mademoiselle  Ge- 
nee's  contract  expired  at  the  Empire  in  Lon- 
don and  she  was  able  to  come  over  here.  In 
that  time  she  had  become  almost  a  British 
institution,  and  when  she  came  over  again  last 
year  Mr.  Walkley  of  the  Times  declared  that 
she  ought  to  hang  up  her  slippers  in  the  British 
Museum  before  she  went  away. 

"I'll  never  stay  very  long  in  one  place 
again,"  she  said.  "And  then — if  I  get  married 
-  Well,  I'm  not  going  to  go  on  dancing  after 
I'm  an  old  lady — but  I'm  quite  an  old  lady 
now!"  And  she  laughed  her  gay,  boyish  laugh, 
sitting  up  very  straight  above  her  high  collar. 

Now  to  an  artist  of  Miss  Duncan's  school 
the  important  thing  must  naturally  be  not 
only  form,  line,  and  rhythm,  but  the  feeling 
which  these  express;  the  most  important  thing 
to  a  premiere  danseuse  is  her  muscles.  To  one, 
you  might  say,  it  is  the  condition  of  her  soul; 
to  the  other  the  condition  of  her  big  toe.  And 
it  takes  a  long  time  to  make  a  premiere  dan- 
seuse. 

[  333  1 


Second  Nights 


Stand  with  your  heels  together  and  your 
feet  turned  out  until  they  are  in  the  same 
straight  line — like  clock  hands  pointing  to 
quarter  past  nine  o'clock.  When  you  can  do 
this  and  wave  your  arms  gracefully  and  smile 
—and  not  fall  over  backward  or  forward — you 
have  learned  one  of  the  first  tricks  of  the  ballet 
dancer's  technic.  For  this  ability  to  keep  the 
feet  parallel  to  the  audience  instead  of  pointed 
at  it  makes  much  of  the  difference  between 
what  is  considered  good  and  bad  ballet  dancing. 

When  Mademoiselle  Genee's  feet  "twinkle" 
in  the  air,  for  instance,  she  isn't,  as  your  eye 
may  suggest,  merely  hitting  her  heels  together 
several  times  before  coming  down.  She  is  doing 
an  entrechat,  which  consists  in  weaving  the  feet 
in  and  out,  so  to  speak,  while  both  are  in  the 
air  and  parallel  to  the  audience.  Two  beats, 
one  out,  one  in,  of  such  a  weaving  is  a  simple 
entrechat;  three  an  entrechat  a  trois,  and  so  on. 
If  the  feet  and  legs  were  pointed  at  the  audience 
the  neat  effect  would  be  spoiled,  even  were  it 
possible  to  do  it  in  that  way.  Very  few  dancers, 
men  or  women,  can  do  the  entrechat  huit.  After 
you  have  tried  a  simple  entrechat  and  kicked 
yourself,  you  have  a  notion  of  the  dexterity  it 

[  334  1 


Some  Ladies  Who  Dance 


takes.  Genee  does  it  with  a  laugh,  as  easily  as 
you  would  twiddle  your  fingers. 

She  doesn't  show  in  her  ordinary  walk  that 
she  is  a  ballet  dancer.  "But  I  remember  an  old 
teacher  in  Germany,"  she  said;  "I  hadn't  met 
him,  but  I  knew  him  the  minute  I  saw  him  on 
the  street.  There  he  was  tramping  down-town 
in  the  second  position!"  The  second  position 
is  the  one  in  which  you  turn  your  feet  out  to 
six  o'clock. 

This  turning  out  of  the  feet  is  important 
again  when  the  dancer  walks  on  the  tips  of  her 
toes.  When  Genee  blows  down  to  the  footlights 
on  the  ends  of  her  slippers  her  legs  are  as 
neatly  folded  as  a  pair  of  scissors — she  would 
look  awkward  and  absurd  if  her  feet  were 
pointed  at  the  audience  and  a  foot  or  so  apart, 
as  they  would  be  in  standing  naturally. 

"And  yet  if  you  watch  your  ballet  dancers 
you  will  find  that  most  of  them  do  do  that, 
more  or  less.  And  they  bend  their  knees,  too" 
—and  Miss  Genee  came  waddling  forward  like 
an  ambitious  and  rather  jocular  duck.  "Of 
course"-— and  she  threw  up  her  hands—  "that 
isn't  dancing."  And  there's  the  high-arched  in- 
step the  dancer  must  start  with  and  the  years 

[  335  ] 


Second  Nights 


of  training  and  constant  practice  to  keep  in 
condition. 

'Two  hours  every  day,"  laughed  Miss 
Genee.  "Of  course,  these  girls  who  learn  to 
dance  after  they're  grown  up  think  it's  a  bore 
and  too  hard,  but  I've  done  it  all  my  life  and 
I'd  miss  it  if  I  didn't  have  it.  And  I  don't  be- 
lieve that  the  art  of  the  ballet  is  dead.  Of 
course,  when  Miss  Isadora  Duncan  says  that 
we  only  began  with  Louis  XIV,  while  her  art 
goes  back  twenty-five  hundred  years,  you 
can't  say  anything  to  that.  I  dare  say  it  does. 
Ballet  dancing  isn't  always  graceful,  but  I 
think  it  can  be  made  so.  They  ask  me  why  I 
do  the  grande  ronde"  (I  think  that  was  the 
phrase;  it  is  the  long  tiptoe  circuit  of  the 
stage).  "Well,  I  do  that  for  just  the  same 
reason  that  the  tenor  in  the  opera  ends  the 
act  with  a  high  note.  There's  no  reason  why 
he  should.  He  does  it  to  show  that  he  can  do 
it,  and  the  people  wouldn't  be  satisfied  if  he 
didn't." 

There  is,  of  course,  no  particular  reason  for 
many  things  in  ballet  dancing  except  that  peo- 
ple happen  to  like  to  see  them  done.  And  while 
it  would  be  unfortunate  if  one  had  to  stop  feel- 

1 336] 


Some  Ladies  Who  Dance 


ing  like  a  Christian  in  order  to  dance  like  a 
Greek,  it  is  undoubtedly  true  that  Miss  Dun- 
can's dancing  rests  on  a  sounder  notion  of  art. 

Miss  Ruth  St.  Denis  belongs  to  still  another 
school.  It  is  her  own,  and  she  and  her  inde- 
fatigable mother  thought  it  up  and  worked  it 
out  themselves.  Miss  St.  Denis's  dances  are  a 
combination  of  picturesque  stage  effects  and 
the  movements  of  an  unusually  lithe  and 
graceful  body.  Interested  by  the  sight  of  the 
real  Orientals  with  whom  Miss  St.  Denis  has 
surrounded  herself,  and  half  drugged  with  in- 
cense, the  spectator  certainly  gets  the  feeling 
that  she  comes  from  east  of  Suez;  and  as  long 
as  the  result  is  pleasing  I  can't  see  that  it 
makes  the  slightest  difference  whether  she 
really  does  or  not. 

Indeed,  original  and  beautiful  as  she  is,  I 
am  not  sure  that  the  most  interesting  thing 
about  this  young  American  girl  isn't  what  she 
has  accomplished  rather  than  what  she  dances. 
She  may  or  may  not  do  this  or  that,  but  her 
kind  of  pluck  and  perseverance  is  what  tames 
wildernesses  and  slays  dragons. 

It's  a  long,  long  way  from  Somerville,  N.  J., 

[  337  1 


Second  Nights 


to  India,  but  what  with  reading  books  in 
libraries  and  watching  queer  Hindus  at  Co- 
ney Island,  this  girl  succeeded  for  her  own  pur- 
poses in  making  the  journey.  It's  a  long  way 
from  a  music-hall  turn  or  even  a  pas  seul  in 
somebody's  else's  play  to  Alma  Tadema's  stu- 
dio and  matinees  of  your  own;  but,  unaided 
and  alone,  you  might  say,  she  did  that,  too. 

When  the  temple  dance  [ends  and  the 
awakened  image  of  Radha — an  ivory-white 
figure  decorated  rather  than  clothed  with 
jewels — becomes  stone  again,  you  might  think 
that  if  you  went  round  behind  the  scenes  you 
would  find  some  languid  houri  smoking  a 
green  cigarette.  What  you  do  find  is  a  tall, 
brisk,  tailor-made  American  girl  with  straight 
gray  eyes,  crisp,  vigorous  speech,  and  a  lively 
interest  in  what  other  people  are  doing.  Ex- 
cept for  an  unusual  litheness  and  a  way  of 
moving,  which  Miss  Duncan's  admirers  might 
describe  as  "that  old  Delsarte  stuff,"  she 
might  have  just  stepped  off  the  campus  of 
some  Western  university. 

Her  mother,  indeed,  did  study  medicine  at 
Ann  Arbor,  and  it  is  this  gray-haired  lady 
in  the  little  black  bonnet — always  a  little  ab- 

[  338  1 


Some  Ladies  Who  Dance 


sent-minded  because  of  having  so  many  things 
on  her  mind  at  once — who  more  or  less  steers 
everything,  from  planning  the  different  dances 
and  seeing  that  Ruthie  is  bundled  off  after  the 
matinee,  so  that  she  won't  talk  herself  weary 
before  the  evening,  to  meeting  reporters  and 
handling  the  Hindu  gentlemen. 

I  had  made  up  droll  histories  for  these  wor- 
thies, who,  I  imagined,  had  never  been  nearer 
India  than  Twenty-ninth  Street  and  Sixth 
Avenue,  and  I  was  rather  grieved  to  find  that 
they  were  real. 

'That  nice  old  gentleman  with  the  square 
beard,"  said  Mrs.  St.  Denis,  ''used  to  be  a 
postmaster  in  India.  He's  a  pensioner  now. 
We  picked  him  up  in  England.  And  the  tall 
one  who  guards  the  door  in  the  temple  scene 
used  to  run  a  liberal  newspaper.  They  all  live 
in  a  flat  and  cook  their  own  meals.  Pop — come 
over  here  and  talk  to  this  gentleman."  And 
the  benign  old  fellow  obediently  trotted  over 
and  showed  me  a  note-book  with  a  poem  called 
"Forget  Me  Not"  copied  in  it  in  his  own 
almost  microscopic  but  perfect  hand. 

Sitting  in  a  wooden  chair  beside  the  electric- 
light  switches,  while  a  vaudeville  team  prac- 

[  339  1 


Second  Nights 


tised  a  waltz  song  on  the  empty  stage  and 
the  Hindus,  looking  much  chillier  in  their 
American  clothes  than  they  did  during  the 
dances  in  almost  nothing  at  all,  stared  into 
space,  Mrs.  St.  Denis  told  something  of  their 
story.  She  was  a  Yankee,  she  said,  a  New  En- 
gland Yankee,  and  she  supposed  it  was  their 
faith  which  had  kept  them  going.  I  asked  if 
she  belonged  to  any  particular  religious  sect. 

"No,"  said  Mrs.  St.  Denis,  "I  just  mean 
believing  that  things  will  turn  out  right  if  you 
work  hard  enough  and  keep  going.  There  is  a 
verse  in  the  last  chapter  of  Habakkuk — that's 
a  book  in  the  Old  Testament — which  always 
seemed  to  help  me.  An  old  lady  in  a  Metho- 
dist church  told  it  to  me:  'Although  the  fig 
tree  shall  not  blossom,  neither  shall  fruit  be  in 
the  vines,  the  labor  of  the  olive  shall  fail  and 
the  fields  shall  yield  no  meat,  yet  the  Lord  God 
is  my  strength  and  He  will  make  my  feet  like 
hinds'  feet  and  He  will  make  me  to  walk  upon 
mine  high  places." 

The  octogenarian  stage-door  tender  here 
asked  Mrs.  St.  Denis  to  make  room  for  the 
vaudevillians,  and  she  did  so,  remarking,  how- 
ever, that  she  and  Ruthie  had  had  to  rehearse 

[  340  ] 


Some  Ladies  Who  Dance 


many  times  under  much  worse  conditions  than 
that.  Well,  Ruthie  was  a  great  out-of-door  girl 
when  she  was  a  child.  Then  she  learned  to 
dance,  and  finally  got  a  place  in  Mrs.  Carter's 
company.  One  day  on  the  road  in  the  West, 
when  things  were  looking  pretty  blue,  she 
saw  a  lithograph  in  a  window  advertising  cig- 
arettes, and  quick  as  a  flash  the  idea  came. 

She  had  always  been  interested  in  the  East. 
And  now  they  dug  into  the  Astor  Library  and 
talked  with  queer  Orientals  at  Coney  Island, 
and  after  a  time  planned  out  the  temple 
dance  very  much  as  it  is  done  now.  They 
peddled  it  up  and  down  Broadway,  but  the 
managers  only  shook  their  heads,  until  finally 
they  got  a  chance  at  a  down-town  music-hall. 
Then  some  nice  people  became  enough  inter- 
ested to  arrange  a  matinee  at  a  regular  theatre. 
It  was  a  great  success,  and  the  whole  family 
went  abroad  to  make  Ruthie's  fortune. 

She  danced  in  London,  Paris,  and  Germany, 
and  one  evening  in  Alma  Tadema's  studio  be- 
fore the  King. 

And  here  they  are — mother,  father,  and 
brother  always  are  on  the  stage  helping  the 
daughter — back  in  their  own  country.  The 

[  34i  ] 


Second  Nights 


awkward  duckling  of  Somerville,  N.  J.,  has 
become  this  strange  exotic  creature  of  the 
East.  She  weaves  her  lithe  body  and  ripples 
her  arms — and  they  do  ripple — over  braziers 
of  incense.  With  two  green  gems  for  eyes  on 
each  hand  she  does  a  cobra  dance  in  an  Indian 
street.  Then  she  dances  before  the  rajahs— 
our  old  friends,  the  postmaster  and  the  liberal 
editor — in  shimmering  skirts  and  jingling 
bracelets  and  rings.  She  goes  into  the  desert 
and  attains  Samadhi,  and  then  comes  the 
temple  dance,  already  spoken  of. 

I  suppose  Miss  St.  Denis  would  much  rather 
have  people  talk  about  her  art  and  mysticism 
and  Yogis  and  Samadhis  and  what  it  all  means. 
For  she  really  is  interested  in  the  East,  and 
actually  prefers  to  take  tea  at  Vantine's.  "  She 
just  is  the  East,"  her  friends  say,  and  I  pre- 
sume they  know.  Certainly  she  is  wonderfully 
picturesque  and  graceful. 

But  the  stage  is  crowded  with  picturesque 
and  graceful  people  and  things.  Girls  who  have 
brains  and  originality  enough  to  make  their 
own  ideas,  and  pluck  enough  to  make  their 
own  success,  are  not  so  common.  And  it  may 
cheer  up  a  bit  some  of  those  who  are  trying,  to 

[  342  ] 


Some  Ladies  Who  Dance 


think  of  the  lithograph  in  the  cigar-store 
window  and  the  tomboy  out  in  Somerville, 
N.  J.,  and  then  remember  the  portrait  by  the 
Austrian  artist  and  the  dance  before  the  King 
and  the  line  of  automobiles  waiting  in  the 
rain  on  a  matinee  afternoon,  all  the  way  from 
the  door  of  the  Hudson  Theatre  up  to  Sixth 
Avenue. 

February,  1910. 


[  343  ] 


XVII 

THE    NEW    DRAMA    AND 
DRURY    LANE 


"We  want  no  more  attempts  to  dress  out  the  simple 
dignity  of  everyday  life  in  the  peacock's  feathers  of 
false  lyricism;  no  more  straw-stuffed  heroes  or  heroines; 
no  more  rabbits  and  goldfish  from  the  conjurer's  pock- 
ets, nor  any  limelight.  Let  us  have  starlight,  moonlight, 
sunlight,  and  the  light  of  our  own  self-  respects.  "- 
Mr.  Galsworthy,  "Platitudes  Concerning  the  Drama," 
1912. 

"We  have  been  spoiled  with  the  exclusive  and  all- 
devouring  drama  of  everyday  life;  where,  instead  of 
the  fictitious  half-believed  personages  of  the  stage  (the 
phantoms  of  old  comedy)  we  recognize  ourselves,  our 
brothers,  aunts,  kinsfolk,  allies,  patrons,  enemies  — 
the  same  as  in  life  —  with  an  interest  in  what  is  going 
on  so  hearty  and  substantial,  that  we  cannot  afford  our 
moral  judgment  in  its  deepest  and  most  vital  results 
to  compromise  or  slumber  for  a  moment.  ...  I  con- 
fess for  myself  that  (with  no  great  delinquencies  to 
answer  for)  I  am  glad  for  a  season  to  take  an  airing 
beyond  the  diocese  of  the  strict  conscience  —  I  come 
back  to  my  cage  and  self-restraint  the  fresher  and  more 
healthy  for  it/'  —  "Essays  of  Elia,"  1822. 

[  344  1 


The  New  Drama  and  Drury  Lane 

ACCORDING  to  Mr.  Galsworthy  three 
courses  are  open  to  the  serious  dramatist.  He 
may  give  the  public  the  views  and  codes  of  life 
by  which  it  lives  and  in  which  it  believes.  He 
may  give  it  those  by  which  he  lives  and  in 
which  he  believes,  or  he  may  merely  set  down, 
as  faithfully  as  may  be,  things  as  he  sees  them, 
selected  and  combined,  but  not  distorted, 
and  leave  the  public  to  draw  its  own  con- 
clusions. 

In  "The  Pigeon,"  which  was  played  at  the 
Little  Theatre,  New  York,  in  the  spring  of 
1912,  we  saw  this  last  course  pursued.  To 
many  it  might  seem  scarcely  a  play  at  all. 
The  author  merely  said,  in  effect — here  are 
some  human  beings  and  this  is  the  way  they 
act.  Here,  for  instance,  is  this  soft-hearted 
artist  person,  Christopher  Wellwyn,  who  gives 
money  to  every  beggar  who  asks  for  it  and 
then  gives  his  card,  too,  and  tells  them  to 
hunt  him  up  if  they  need  help.  Of  course  they 
come  soon  enough.  They  sleep  in  all  his  spare 
rooms,  borrow  all  his  clothes,  and,  after  all,  his 
kindness  seems  to  do  little  good.  The  broken- 
down  old  cabby  only  goes  and  gets  drunk 
again;  the  vagabond  Frenchman,  with  his 

[345 1 


Second  Nights 


quick  understanding,  snatches  of  philosophy, 
and  determination  not  to  be  exploited  by  the 
bourgeoisie,  is  soon  as  desperate  as  ever.  The 
pretty,  pleasure-loving,  weak-mouthed  Mrs. 
Megan,  who  sells  flowers  and  won't  live  with 
her  husband,  no  sooner  gets  rested  and  fed 
than  she's  out  and  into  trouble  again. 

If  the  old  cabman,  with  his  hearty  British 
hatred  of  "aliens,"  were  but  in  a  slightly  dif- 
ferent material  husk,  people  would  find  him  a 
"fine  old-fashioned  gentleman,  carrying  his 
liquor  well."  The  young  Frenchman  would  be 
a  traveller,  a  graceful  amateur,  with  a  "soul 
above  mere  trade."  The  flower  girl  would  be 
"that  charming  Mrs.  So-and-So,  so  light- 
hearted,  chic,  full  of  the/ozV  de  vivre" 

Unfortunately,  luck  didn't  do  that  for  them. 
And  here  they  are,  "rotters"  all,  as  the  artist's 
crisp,  practical  young  daughter  puts  it.  He 
might  better  stop  helping  them  and  take  care 
of  himself,  but  even  he,  it  appears,  is  not  his 
own  master.  "If  I've  got  to  give  up  feeling 
nice  here,"  says  he,  tapping  himself  on  the 
chest,  "then  I  don't  know  what  I  am  going  to 
do.  I'll  just  have  to  sit  with  my  head  in  a  bag!" 
It  is  stronger  than  he  is — as  is  drink  for  the 

[346] 


The  New  Drama  and  Drury  Lane 

cabman,  soft,  pleasant  things  for  Mrs.  Megan, 
and,  for  the  Frenchman,  the  open  road. 

In  come  some  of  the  artist's  friends — a  jus- 
tice of  the  peace,  a  professor,  a  clergyman. 
They  are  more  stiff-necked,  with  vigorous 
theories  as  to  what  should  be  done.  The  J.  P.  is 
all  for  old-fashioned  individualism.  What  these 
people  want  is  a  shock — wake  'em  up  to  some 
sense  of  responsibility,  help  the  deserving  and 
the  devil  take  the  hindmost !  The  professor,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  for  modern,  scientific  team- 
work, for  "giving  the  State  all  we  can  spare 
so  that  the  undeserving  may  be  made  de- 
serving." And  each  gentleman  is  so  sure  that 
he  can  make  the  other  see  the  light  if  he  will 
give  him  but  a  minute's  time  that  they  bustle 
off  the  stage  in  a  gale  of  their  own  argument. 

The  flower  girl  goes  out  to  service— "an 
excellent  place"-— the  clergyman  beams  with 
great  satisfaction,  only  to  find  out  a  little  later 
that  "she's  got  the  footman  into  trouble." 
The  Frenchman  goes  to  an  institution— "a 
palace,"  says  he,  after  his  escape;  "one  may 
eat  on  the  floor,"  but  it  appears  that  there's 
something  which  scientific  management,  sani- 
tation, and  germless  food  will  not  reach— 

[  347  1 


Second  Nights 


"there  is  in  some  human  souls,  Monsieur,  what 
cannot  be  made  tame"  .  .  . 

Mrs.  Megan,  in  a  burst  of  despair,  finally 
jumps  into  the  river,  but  even  this  stiffening 
of  will  is  short-lived.  The  water  is  cold,  it  gets 
into  her  mouth,  she's  sorry  she  did  it,  and 
thinks  in  that  sharp  moment  "of  her  baby  that 
died — an5  dancin' — an' '  —in  short,  the  police- 
man drags  her  out  before  she  can  drown.  And 
then,  everybody  believing  and  having  said 
that  it  would  be  much  better  for  her  if  she 
could  die,  she  is  lugged  off  to  court  to  be  pun- 
ished for  attempting  suicide. 

It  was  Christmas  Eve  when  these  waifs 
came  together  in  the  artist's  studio.  It  is  April 
Fool's  Day  when  they  are  seen  for  the  last 
time,  and  Mr.  Wellwyn,  having  tipped  three 
times  instead  of  once  the  men  who  are  moving 
his  household  effects  to  a  new  studio,  whose 
address  his  daughter  intends  the  derelicts  shall 
not  know,  of  course  ends  by  secretly  giving  his 
card  to  all  three  again. 

Nothing  is  "proved,"  and  the  author  ven- 
tures no  personal  opinion  except  a  certain  im- 
plied criticism  of  institutionalism  which  ig- 
nores the  individual's  need  of  "being  himself." 

[  348  ] 


The  New  Drama  and  Drury  Lane 

There  is  no  plot;  characters  merely  come  and 
go.  One  could  imagine  Mr.  Agustus  Thomas, 
who  watched  proceedings  the  opening  night 
with  great  interest  from  a  third-row  seat,  in- 
wardly observing:  "All  very  well,  my  dear 
fellow,  but  suppose  you  leave  this  nice  little 
room  and  this  sympathetic  family  party  and 
fly  your  pigeon  against  the  jumbled-up  and 
more  or  less  bone-headed  collection  of  listen- 
ers which  fills  the  average  theatre?" 

Such  a  question  is  pertinent,  but  it  is  pre- 
cisely in  escaping  some  of  the  mechanical 
difficulties  which  the  dramatist  must  generally 
surmount  that  the  small  theatre  performs  its 
special  service  and  gives  a  chance  for  work 
like  this,  which,  ineffective  as  it  might  be  as  a 
rough-and-ready  theatrical  machine,  is  six 
times  more  worth  hearing  than  the  average 
play. 

It  is  difficult  to  convey  the  lively  and  con- 
tinuous charm  of  the  piece  as  played  by  a 
capable  company — its  vigorous  freshness  and 
rich  humor,  the  sense  the  spectator  constantly 
got  of  listening  to  the  real  thing.  Of  course, 
by  humor  one  doesn't  mean  mere  quotable 
"lines,"  but  that  more  suggestive  humor  which 

[  349  ] 


Second  Nights 


springs  from  the  general  irony  of  things — the 
grim  contrasts  between  humans  and  the  vast 
forces  which  swirl  them  about.  The  broken- 
down  old  cabby,  helpless,  hopeless,  drunk  as  a 
lord,  lurching  out  to  heaven  knows  what,  and 
mumbling  cheerfully  as  he  disappears,  "Where 
to,  mister?"  is  an  example.  So  are  the  two 
theorists,  stumbling  over  him  as — still  talking 
— they  hurry  out.  The  individual  is  not  taken 
account  of  in  their  reckoning.  Or  the  French- 
man, struggling  to  describe  that  "something 
which  cannot  be  made  tame"-  :'You  English 
are  so — so  civilized." 

'The  Pigeon"  is  a  well-nigh  perfect  ex- 
ample of  Mr.  Galsworthy's  austere  and  self- 
denying  art — of  the  play  in  which  plot  is  hung 
to  character  instead  of  character  to  plot,  in 
which  actions  spring  inevitably  from  temper- 
ament and  what  has  gone  before,  where  none 
of  the  people  of  the  play  say  things  for  the  sake 
of  saying  them,  and  the  dialogue,  "hand-made, 
like  good  lace,  furthers  with  each  thread  the 
harmony  and  strength  of  a  design  to  which  all 
must  be  subordinated."  Plainly  a  very  dif- 
ferent sort  of  art  from  the  topical  patchwork  of 
the  average  play-carpenter,  however  skilful, 

[  350  ] 


The  New  Drama  and  Drury  Lane 

and  not  incorrectly  called  "new,"  although  the 
gentle  Elia,  as  the  quotation  at  the  beginning 
of  these  remarks  will  suggest,  was  lamenting 
the  "new"  realistic  drama  that  made  one 
think  of  one's  self  and  one's  relatives,  nearly  a 
century  ago. 

The  "new"  drama  is  but  part  of  the  general 
radical,  reforming  movement  of  recent  years. 
It  has  sprung  up  in  many  forms  since  Ibsen 
began  smashing  idols  a  generation  ago,  but 
the  prophets  of  each,  whether  realists  like  Mr. 
Galsworthy,  or  lyricists  like  the  Irishmen 
Yeats  and  Synge,  have  this  in  common — they 
are  all  trying  to  get  away  from  the  false,  des- 
iccated, the  formal,  and  back  to  what  seems 
to  each  the  real  thing. 

In  our  country  the  new  drama  has  brought 
forward  no  definite  spokesman  as  yet,  al- 
though echoes  of  Ibsen's  technic,  Shaw's  anti- 
romantic  fireworks,  the  feminism  in  the  air, 
are  everywhere  heard.  In  England,  how- 
ever, plays  like  "Justice,"  "Strife,"  "The 
Pigeon,"  "Rutherford  and  Son,"  "Kindle 
Wakes,"  with  their  undeniable  force  and  their 
common  tendency  to  disdain  theatrical  clap- 
trap and  stand  up  to  the  facts,  as  Mr.  Shaw 

1 351 1 


Second  Nights 


would  say,  have  appeared  in  sufficient  numbers 
to  make  something  very  like  a  new  school  of 
play-writing. 

The  authors  of  all  these  plays  employ  a 
quiet  technic;  depend  on  the  force  of  truth 
rather  than  of  noise,  and  the  creation  of  an 
illusion  of  every-day  life  so  complete  that  the 
spectator  actually  lives,  for  the  time  being,  the 
life  of  those  on  the  stage.  To  these  drama- 
tists the  theatre  is  not  a  place  to  see  other  peo- 
ple play  a  game  according  to  certain  rules,  as 
one  goes  to  the  Polo  Grounds  to  see  the  Giants 
play  baseball,  but  a  sort  of  extension  of  one's 
real  life.  One  does  not  there  escape  from  life  so 
much  as  enter  into  it — see  it  more  clearly  and 
feel  it  more  poignantly.  And  along  with  this, 
of  course,  goes  a  good  deal  of  approval  of  the 
individual's  right  to  "live  his  own  life  "and 
determine  his  course  in  any  set  of  circum- 
stances according  to  his  own  judgment  in- 
stead of  according  to  what  the  world  may  say. 
The  contrast  to  old-fashioned  conventions  is 
especially  noticeable  in  the  case  of  women  and 
their  right  to  think  and  act  for  themselves. 

Thus  in  Mr.  Stanley  Houghton's  "Hindle 
Wakes,"  which  sets  forth  in  much  the  same 

[  352  ] 


The  New  Drama  and  Drury  Lane 

realistic  but  non-committal  fashion  as  "The 
Pigeon"  the  effects  on  all  concerned  of  the 
betrayal  (if  such  it  may  be  called)  of  a  Lanca- 
shire mill  girl  by  the  son  of  her  employer,  the 
girl  refuses  to  marry  the  man  after  every  one 
has  finally  been  brought  to  the  conclusion  that 
he  must  "do  the  right  thing."  She  knew  what 
she  was  doing  as  well  as  he,  and  wants  no 
more  of  the  whining  cad  who  had  dazzled  her 
for  a  day.  She  has  a  trade  and  as  long  as 
there  are  mill-wheels  turning  in  Lancashire  she 
can  shift  for  herself. 

A  similar  position  was  taken  by  the  young 
Indiana  woman  in  Mr.  David  Graham  Phil- 
lips's  play  "The  Merit  of  a  Woman,"  pro- 
duced in  this  country  a  few  years  ago. 

The  new  drama  in  Ireland  has  meant  not 
only  a  general  return  to  nature  but  a  specific 
return  to  Irish  nature — to  Irish  scenes,  speech, 
ways  of  thinking  and  feeling,  and — when  in- 
terpreted by  the  Irish  Players — to  acting  as 
near  as  possible  a  reproduction  of  the  unpre- 
meditated motions  and  talk  of  Irish  peasants 
unacquainted  with  the  conventions  of  theatres 
and  towns. 

The  very  determination  to  be  simple  though 

[  353  ] 


Second  Nights 


the  skies  fall  involves  a  certain  amount  of  pose 
which  the  prophets  of  the  Irish  literary  revival 
have  not  always  escaped.  I  think  one  feels 
this  in  some  of  Mr.  Yeats's  plays — feels  that 
he  is  a  trifle  too  set  on  getting  away  from  our 
sordid  world,  that  a  stouter  imagination  might 
take  it  as  it  is  and  make  something  out  of  it 
after  all.  This  is  likely  to  be  the  trouble  with 
such  dramatized  wistfulness  as  'The  Land 
of  Heart's  Desire"  —at  least  as  it  comes  across 
the  footlights. 

He  is  on  firmer  ground  in  "Cathleen  ni 
Hoolihan."  Here,  as  a  young  man  is  about  to 
be  married,  a  withered  hag  knocks  at  the  cot- 
tage door.  She  typifies  Ireland.  The  family 
give  her  a  seat  by  the  fire,  and  in  answer  to 
their  questions,  she  hints  at  her  tragic  story- 
how  her  lands  have  been  taken  away  from  her 
by  strangers,  how  many  men  have  died  in  the 
effort  to  regain  them.  "You  must  have  had 
much  trouble/'  they  say.  "Few  have  had 
more  than  I."  They  offer  food  and  money.  It 
is  not  that  she  wants.  Those  only  can  help  who 
will  give  her  themselves.  "Lovers  I've  had," 
she  croons,  "many  men  have  died  for  me." 
She  rises  to  take  up  her  weary  journey.  There 

[  354  I 


The  New  Drama  and  Drury  Lane 

is  cheering  in  the  distance.  The  French — it 
is  in  the  times  of  1798 — have  landed.  The 
young  man  rises,  too,  his  eyes  on  her.  In 
the  doorway  she  turns  to  repeat  that  those 
who  have  red  cheeks  now  will  have  pale  ones 
before  they  have  done  serving  her.  His  bride 
rushes  in  and  entreats  him  to  stay,  but  he  fol- 
lows and  disappears.  The  appeal  of  this  is 
straight  and  true — true  of  all  patriotism  as 
well  as  that  of  Ireland. 

It  is  interesting  to  contrast  with  it  the  play 
of  another  of  the  new  Irish  dramatists — Mr. 
Lennox  Robinson's  "Patriots."  Both  were 
trying,  doubtless  in  their  different  manners,  to 
get  away  from  the  conventional  stage  Irish- 
man— the  sentimental  Boucicault  type  on  the 
one  hand,  the  vulgar  buffoon  with  green  whisk- 
ers on  the  other — and  back  to  something  gen- 
uine and  true.  Mr.  Yeats,  a  poet,  finds  this 
in  an  allegory  in  which  the  soul  of  his  country, 
as  it  were,  takes  form  and  speaks.  Mr.  Rob- 
inson, a  satirical  realist,  shows  how  absurd  the 
traditional  Irish  patriotism  may  become  in  the 
face  of  modern  facts. 

The  Nugent  brothers  are  busy  with  the  af- 
fairs of  the  "league"  when  the  play  opens.  A 

[  355  1 


Second  Nights 


league  of  fighters  once— of  passwords,  hidden 
stores  of  arms,  quick  blows  in  the  dark — it  has 
become  a  sort  of  rural  lyceum  and  lecture 
bureau.  We  hear  James  Nugent,  a  fussy  old 
muffin  who  might  be  the  editor  of  some  desic- 
cated literary  review,  or  secretary  of  a  sub- 
urban drama  discussion  society,  chattering 
complacently  of  the  league's  progress.  There 
is  to  be  a  lecture— very,  very  interesting— 
"With  a  Camera  through  the  Apennines" 
and  another,  rather  daring  butmost  significant, 
on  the  nationalization  of  the  Irish  railways.  We 
see  their  sister  Ann — wife  of  the  league's  old 
fighting  leader,  James  O'Mahoney,  in  prison 
these  eighteen  years — and  her  crippled  daugh- 
ter. A  very  Joan  of  Arc,  side  by  side  with  her 
husband  in  the  old  days,  she  never  mentions 
him  or  them  now  without  a  strange  coldness 
and  hardness— but  she  has  made  their  gro- 
cery the  most  successful  in  the  district.  The 
change  that  has  come  over  things — the  new 
prosperity  and  the  disinclination  foolishly  to 
stir  up  trouble,  the  gradual  wearing  away  of 
the  old  spirit  of  revolt  under  the  constant  drip 
of  English  concessions— "sops,"  O'Mahoney 
would  have  called  them — all  this  is  revealed 

[  356] 


The  New  Drama  and  Drury  Lane 

with  sympathy  and  penetrating  satire.  Then 
comes  the  thunderbolt.  James  has  been  re- 
leased from  prison  and  is  coming  back. 

He  comes  unchanged,  except  in  years,  to 
this  world  grown  away  from  him.  To  the 
ingratiating  explanations  of  his  brothers-in- 
law  about  the  thriving  condition  of  the  league 
he  interposes:  "How  many  arms — how  many 
rifles — have  you  got?"  His  wife,  hardened 
and  faded,  if  not  broken,  looks  back  almost 
with  horror  to  the  wild  days  when,  fascinated 
by  his  passionate  enthusiasm,  she  threw  her 
whole  youth  and  strength  into  the  hopeless 
cause. 

The  change  in  every  one  only  spurs  the  old 
leader  to  new  zeal — he  had  feared  that  he 
would  not  be  needed,  and  now  he  finds  that  he 
is  needed  more  than  ever.  So  he  calls  a  meet- 
ing at  the  village  hall.  Two  young  fellows  of 
the  new  generation  look  in  before  he  arrives, 
but,  finding  out  what  is  on,  languidly  shake 
their  heads  and  go  to  the  moving-picture 
show.  When  O'Mahoney  arrives  there  is  no 
one  to  listen  to  him.  The  old  war-horse  deter- 
mines then  to  move  on  to  Dublin,  where  some 
of  the  old  spirit  must  still  survive,  and  the 

[  357  1 


Second  Nights 


crippled  daughter  declares  she  will  go  with 
him.  The  mother  interposes,  and  in  the  vio- 
lent moment  which  follows  reveals  the  secret 
which  has  stood  between  them  during  his 
prison  years — the  daughter  was  born  a  crip- 
ple because  of  the  shock  to  the  mother  when 
O'Mahoney,  thinking  only  of  escaping  arrest, 
had  fought  his  pursuers  from  the  very  room 
where  she  was  lying.  This  breaks  O'Mahoney 
down  at  last.  He  has  killed  men,  maimed  his 
own  child,  spent  the  best  of  his  life  in  prison, 
and  what  has  he  accomplished,  after  all?  To 
build  up  a  new  life  as  best  he  may,  he  staggers 
out,  leaning  on  his  wife's  arm,  followed  by  the 
absurd  brothers-in-law.  The  canny  old  jan- 
itor watches  them  depart,  turns  down  the 
lights,  looks  at  his  watch.  "It's  only  quarter 
after  eight,"  says  he.  "There's  time  to  see 
the  movin'  pictures  yet!" 

All  through,  the  author  is  fair  to  both  sides. 
The  brothers-in-law  are  piffling  and  ridicu- 
lous, the  wife  hard,  yet  in  their  regard  for 
peace,  and  hatred  of  hopeless  revolt,  they  have 
all  the  common  sense,  and  perhaps  something 
more,  on  their  side.  The  intransigent  O'Ma- 
honey is  an  archaic  nuisance  in  the  environ- 

[  358 1 


The  New  Drama  and  Drury  Lane 

ment  to  which  he  returns,  yet  his  bigness  and 
nobility  cannot  be  escaped.  Here  is  a  chance 
for  satire — the  interplay  of  these  two  types, 
both  so  fairly  put,  and  at  bottom  so  tragic— 
with  life  and  body  to  it.  A  play  so  apparently 
artless,  and  yet  at  once  so  droll  and  searching, 
is  not  encountered  every  day. 

I  suppose  these  two  plays  might  be  said  to 
represent  those  two  eyes  which,  according  to 
Mr.  Shaw,  an  Irishman  possesses.  With  one 
he  sees  that  a  dream  is  beautiful,  with  the 
other  that  it  is  a  dream.  In  other  words,  he 
has  a  keen  sense  of  reality,  but  with  it  an  in- 
tellectual detachment  which  permits  him  to 
play  with  a  fanciful  idea  for  the  fun  of  playing 
with  it. 

Synge  illustrates  this  in  his  "  Playboy  of  the 
Western  World."  He,  too,  was  trying  to  get 
away  from  the  conventional  stage  Irishman 
and  he  took  his  audience  to  a  remote  poverty- 
stricken  village,  there  to  play  for  a  moment 
with  the  idea  of  the  Irish  passion  for  eloquence, 
the  impatience  with  a  youth  who  has  "no 
savagery  or  fine  words  in  him  at  all." 

Christy  Mahon — the  playboy — is  full  of 
"fine  words  and  savagery/'  and  out  of  a  row 

[  359  I 


Second  Nights 


with  an  ugly  father  and  the  villagers'  thirst 
for  something  thrilling,  he  is  soon  making  him- 
self a  hero.  And  no  wonder  when  you  hear 
him  talk.  "What  call  have  you  to  be  lone- 
some," asks  Pegeen,  who  tends  bar,  "when 
there's  poor  girls  walking  Mayo  in  their  thou- 
sands now?" 

"It's  well  you  know  what  call  I  have.  It's  a 
lonesome  thing  to  be  passing  small  towns  with 
the  lights  shining  sideways  when  the  night  is 
down,  or  going  in  strange  places  with  a  dog 
nosing  before  you  and  a  dog  nosing  behind,  or 
drawn  to  the  cities  where  you'd  hear  a  voice 
kissing  and  talking  deep  love  in  every  shadow 
of  the  ditch,  and  you  passing  on  with  an 
empty,  hungry  stomach  failing  from  your 
heart.  .  .  ." 

But  the  girl  fears  that  he'll  soon  be  leaving 
her  for  some  girl  in  his  own  land.  "Starting 
from  you,  is  it?"  says  Christy.  "I  will  not, 
then,  and  when  the  airs  is  warming  in  four 
months  or  five,  it's  then  yourself  and  me  should 
be  pacing  Neifin  in  the  dews  of  night,  the  times 
sweet  smells  do  be  rising,  and  you'd  see  a  little 
shiny  new  moon,  maybe,  sinking  on  the  hills." 
And  so  he  talks  on,  feeling  almost  "a  kind  of 


The  New  Drama  and  Drury  Lane 

pity  for  the  Lord  God  of  all  ages  sitting  lone- 
some in  his  golden  chair,"  until  Pegeen  cries  at 
last:  "And  myself,  a  girl,  was  tempted  often 
to  go  sailing  the  seas  till  I'd  marry  a  Jewman 
with  ten  kegs  of  gold,  and  I  not  knowing  at  all 
there  was  the  like  of  you  drawing  near,  like 
the  stars  of  God." 

And  then,  in  the  middle  of  everything,  in 
tramps  old  Mahon  himself,  not  killed  in  the 
least,  ready  to  take  his  wild  young  "playboy" 
home  and  thrash  him.  The  heroic  bubble 
breaks.  The  men  folks  are  relieved — they'll 
have  peace  now  with  their  drinks.  But  Pegeen, 
her  dream  shattered,  is  looking  out  the  door  as 
the  curtain  falls.  "Oh,  my  grief!"  she's  crying, 
and  in  her  voice  all  youth's  wild  regret,  "I've 
lost  the  only  Playboy  in  the  Western  World!" 

It  must  have  been  the  lack  of  the  Irishman's 
two  eyes  which  caused  some  of  our  trans- 
planted Irishmen  to  bombard  Mr.  Synge's 
poetry  with  eggs  and  potatoes.  They  must 
otherwise  have  seen  that,  instead  of  suggesting 
that  Irishmen  were  fond  of  murdering  their 
fathers,  he  was  but  a  poet  saturated  in  peas- 
ant lore  and  peasant  talk,  trying  to  get  away 
from  the  cold  formalism  of  sophisticated  art  to 

[361 1 


Second  Nights 


simpler,  wilder  things,  and  merely  taking  the 
idea  of  village  narrowness  and  thirst  for  ex- 
citement and  for  a  moment  playing  with  it. 

It  is  the  song  in  his  lines,  the  flavor  and 
fragrance,  the  wild  wistfulness — this,  and  not 
dramatic  quality  as  the  ordinary  actor  or 
stage-manager  understands  it — which  makes 
Synge's  work  so  fine  and  rare.  He  deliberately 
set  out  to  find  these  things—  •"  speech  fully 
flavored  as  a  nut  or  an  apple"— and  buried 
himself  away  from  the  "modern  literature  of 
towns"  as  a  prospector  buries  himself  away  in 
the  mountains  in  search  of  pure  gold. 

And  it  was  gold  he  brought  back,  so  pure 
and  fine  that  one  does  not  question  its  source. 
This  cannot  always  be  said  of  the  new  Irish 
play-writers.  As  soon  as  the  spectator  begins 
to  be  bored — and  the  outsider,  not  sharing  the 
patriotic  zeal  which  inspires  their  efforts,  oc- 
casionally is  bored — he  begins  to  question  this 
business  of  deserting  one's  previous  experience 
and  speech  and  adopting  the  speech  and  ideas 
of  peasants  in  order  to  be  natural  and  sim- 
ple. All  very  well  in  its  way,  says  he,  and 
quaint  and  amusing,  but,  after  all,  something 
of  a  pose. 

[362 1 


The  New  Drama  and  Drury  Lane 

There  is  no  such  questioning  in  the  case  of 
Synge.  Such  a  little  tragic  masterpiece  as 
"Riders  to  the  Sea,"  for  instance,  holds  the 
spectator  as  do  few  things  in  the  theatre.  Not 
more  than  a  half-hour  long,  played  in  a  bare 
cottage  interior  with  a  window  looking  on  the 
sea,  it  becomes,  as  interpreted  by  the  Irish 
players,  pure  poetry,  unmarred  by  author's 
or  actor's  artifice.  Speech  and  action  are 
merged  into  a  sort  of  crooning  music.  It  is  less 
a  play  than  a  dirge,  moaning  through  the  cold 
sea  fog  and  the  dull  crash  of  the  surf. 

"Riders  to  the  Sea"  and  "The  Playboy" 
may  seem  very  different  from  "The  Pigeon" 
or  "Hindle  Wakes/'  and  of  course  the  Synge 
plays  belong  to  what  Mr.  Galsworthy  calls 
that  "twisting  and  delicious  stream  of  poetry" 
down  which  he  thinks  that  part  of  the  English 
drama  of  the  future  will  flow,  while  the  other 
part — to  which  his  own  plays  belong — flows  in 
the  "broad  and  clear-cut  channel  of  natural- 
ism." 

Yet  all  four  of  these  plays,  like  others  of  the 
"new"  drama,  have  this  in  common — they  are 
faithful  to  something  the  author  has  genuinely 
lived,  or  perceived,  or  felt,  and  the  spectator 

[363  ] 


Second  Nights 


is  expected  to  view  them  in  a  similar  mood,  as 
an  interpretation  or  an  extension,  so  to  speak, 
of  his  own  life  and  thought.  He  becomes  part 
of  the  play  instead  of  standing  outside  and 
looking  at  it  as  one  watches  a  conjurer  or 
acrobat.  "We  want  no  more  limelight,"  as  Mr. 
Galsworthy  puts  it,  "let  us  have  starlight, 
moonlight,  sunlight  and  the  light  of  our  own 
self-respects." 

With  this  statement  of  artistic  faith  most 
of  us,  I  think,  will  readily  agree.  Such  is  the  in- 
tention of  all  the  drama  of  our  time,  however 
fantastic  its  exterior,  which  may  really  be 
taken  seriously.  In  this  direction  lies  all  chance 
of  growth. 

There  might  be  no  qualifications  to  such  a 
programme  were  it  true  that  the  playgoer  is 
always  ready,  as  the  new  drama  demands  he 
shall  be,  to  take  part  in  the  play;  to  think,  talk, 
and  move  with  the  persons  he  sees  thinking, 
talking,  and  moving  on  the  stage,  recognize 
among  them  not  only  his  relatives  but  him- 
self, and  co-operate  for  a  few  hours  with  the 
avid  dramatist  in  the  exploitation,  analysis— 
and  possible  enrichment — of  his  own  existence. 

But  he  is  not  always  ready.  His  mind  is  no 
more  forever  hungry  for  nourishment  than  his 

1 364] 


The  New  Drama  and  Drury  Lane 

body  is  for  food.  There  are  seasons  when  he 
has  no  wish  to  take  part  in  the  play,  when, 
indeed,  he  asks — nay,  wails — to  be  permitted 
to  lock  a  door  on  himself  and  his  responsible 
life  and  be  wafted  away  to  the  blessed  isles. 

May  this  boon  never  be  vouchsafed?  Must 
he  always  be  himself,  think,  have  opinions, 
never  escape  from  weighing  truth  and  deciding 
'twixt  right  and  wrong?  We  are  radicals  in  the 
morning  and  conservatives  in  the  afternoon, 
as  somebody  has  said,  yet  the  playgoer  must 
sustain  his  radicalism  till  the  evening,  always 
be  ready  to  grow,  to  advance,  never  sink  bliss- 
fully back  in  his  orchestra  seat,  confident  that 
in  the  world  he  is  about  to  enter  everything  is 
decided  beforehand  and  guided  by  a  higher 
power. 

Mr.  Galsworthy,  arguing  for  the  austere, 
finely  chiselled  drama  of  character,  laments 
the  fate  of  characters  in  the  more  conventional 
play — impaled  on  a  row  of  stages,  so  to  speak, 
"characters  who  would  have  liked  to  live,  but 
came  to  untimely  grief;  who  started  bravely, 
but  fell  on  these  stakes,  placed  beforehand  in  a 
row,  and  were  transfixed  one  by  one,  while 
their  ghosts  stride  on,  squeaking  and  gibber- 
ing through  the  play.  The  demand  for  a  good 

1 365 1 


Second  Nights 


plot  commonly  signifies  *  tickle  my  sensations 
by  stuffing  the  play  with  arbitrary  adventures, 
so  that  I  need  not  be  troubled  to  take  the  char- 
acter seriously.  Set  the  persons  of  the  play  to 
action,  regardless  of  time,  sequence,  atmos- 
phere, and  probability!" 

All  this  is  very  true,  yet  in  holding  out  for 
his  stern  ideal  he  chooses  to  ignore  for  the 
moment  that  people  now  and  then  demand  in 
the  theatre  the  pleasure  of  "play"  in  its 
literal  sense,  of  making  the  stage  conventions 
a  sort  of  game  which  all  concerned  conduct 
with  straight  faces,  like  children  with  their 
make-believe.  The  polished  villain  of  Drury 
Lane  melodrama  is  impaled  on  a  stake,  to  be 
sure,  and  there  is  precisely  the  fun  of  the  thing. 
Everybody  knows  from  fond  experience  just 
how  he  will  tap  his  cigarette  case  and  say 
"Curses!"  And  when  he  does  these  things 
exactly  as  he  has  always  done  them,  the 
spectator  is  made  happy. 

The  villainess  of  real  life  or  of  the  new 
drama  does  not  ring  a  bell,  so  to  speak,  when 
she  comes.  She  sometimes  makes  virtue  unat- 
tractive and  vice  heroic  and  desirable,  insinu- 
ates herself  through  one's  better  nature,  so  to 
speak,  and  makes  one  puzzled  and  uncom- 

[366] 


The  New  Drama  and  Drury  Lane 

fortable.  These  "inside"  modern  villainesses 
are  no  fun  at  all.  But  the  outside,  visual 
ones  of  melodrama,  with  their  lowering  pic- 
ture hats,  vermilion  lips,  and  languishing 
eyes — their  signs,  as  it  were,  "This  Way  to 
the  Villainess"-—  how  simple  and  comfortable! 
So  heap  on  the  horrors!  Writhe,  O  lovely 
heroine,  and  demand  if  fate  is  forever  to  be 
unkind !  Look  ever  nobler,  O  gallant  hero,  and 
more  completely  self-sacrificing!  Glitter  and 
sneer,  O  scarlet  villainess,  and  weave  thy  ac- 
cursed webs!  This  isn't  life,  nor  "criticism  of 
life,"  nor  some  diabolically  penetrating  Ibsen 
thing  that  will  not  be  shaken  off  even  when  we 
emerge  into  Longacre  Square  and  the  clear 
winter  night.  This  is  play. 

Imagine,  if  you  please — after  a  course  of 
Strindberg  matinees — a  stage,  wide,  high, 
and  full  of  people.  His  Majesty's  transport, 
Beachy  Head,  crowded  with  troops,  is  outward 
bound  to  "Gib."  It  is  a  foggy  night  and  the 
siren  breaks  hoarsely  into  the  dialogue  every 
few  sentences — with  real  steam.  Observe  the 
captain  and  his  first  officer  on  the  bridge 
anxiously  scanning  the  murk  with  their  glasses 
—the  blue  sputter  of  the  wireless — the  lovely 
ladies,  officers'  wives  no  doubt,  on  the  deck 

[  367  ] 


Second  Nights 


below — the  troops  in  khaki  crowding  the  main 
deck. 

And  who  is  this  handsome  dark  young  man 
whose  uniform  fits  him  so  much  better  than 
the  others?—  "By  the  set  of  those  shoulders, 
my  man,  you  have  taken  the  Queen's  shilling 
before,"  observes  the  suspicious  officer — who, 
indeed,  but  our  young  friend  Sir  Dorian 
March  ?  To  save  a  lady's  honor  he  became  last 
night  the  innocent  custodian  of  a  stolen  coro- 
net, overcame  innumerable  constables,  swam 
the  river  at  Windsor,  dived  over  the  waterfall, 
and  now  has  enlisted  to  escape  disgrace. 

"  Bray-y-y-y-y!"  goes  the  siren  again.  Bluer 
and  more  nervous  is  the  sputter  of  the  wire- 
less. It  is  a  message  from  ashore,  and  poor  Sir 
Dorian  is  discovered. 

The  detail  is  marched  out.  Dorian  is  ac- 
cused. Mr.  Norris,  the  rich  pawnbroker  from 
whom  the  coronet  was  stolen  by  Lady  Marion 
Beaumont,  is  near  to  death,  it  seems,  from  the 
morphine  which  that  harassed  lady  gave  him. 
Sir  Dorian  must  answer  for  murder  when  he 
gets  to  shore.  "I  would  not  interfere,"  says  the 
colonel,  "if  you  saw  fit  to  jump  overboard  and 
make  an  end  of  yourself,  Dorian  March!"  And 
then — crash!  The  ship  has  struck  the  rocks 

1 368  ] 


The  New  Drama  and  Drury  Lane 

and  is  sinking.  All  is  confusion,  shrieks,  and 
wailing,  but  it  is  Dorian  March  who  seizes 
the  Union  Jack,  and  with  a  "Let's  die  like 
men!"  stands  in  the  spot-light  with  the  troops 
about  him  as  the  Beachy  Head  goes  dowrn. 

It's  a  grand  sight,  and  we  keep  on  applaud- 
ing and  applauding,  because  each  time  the  cur- 
tain rises  the  ingenious  stage  mechanism  has 
made  the  ship  sink  a  little  lower,  and  if  we  ap- 
plaud long  enough,  maybe  we  can  sink  it, 
funnels  and  all! 

Yes,  this  is  play,  and  villainy  can  no  more 
harm  a  hair  of  Sir  Dorian's  constantly  im- 
perilled head — we  are  seeing  "The  Sins  of  So- 
ciety"—than  Captain  Greville  Sartoris  and 
wicked  Mrs.  D'Aguila  can  keep  the  best  horse 
from  winning  in  "The  Whip."  Yet  we  can 
somehow  contrive — so  vivid  are  the  attacks  on 
eye  and  ear — constantly  to  be  fearful  of  their 
fates.  And  as  the  express-train  roars  down  to 
Newmarket  through  the  night  and  wicked  Sar- 
toris— how  superbly  lithe  and  handsome  he 
is!— creeps  along  the  running-board  and  un- 
couples the  car  in  which  the  beautiful  race- 
horse is  locked,  in  the  path  of  the  approaching 
train;  as  the  train  roars  nearer  and  the  track- 
man waves  his  frantic  red  lantern  and  the  fin- 

[  369  ] 


Second  Nights 


ger  of  a  far-off  motor's  search-light  begins  to 
waver  across  the  countryside — Lady  Di  to  the 
rescue ! — must  the  childlike  delight  in  scenes 
like  this  be  sternly  civilized  away? 

Not  without  something  more  than  a  regret- 
ful sigh — indirectly  expressed  every  time  a 
really  well-made  piece  of  this  sort  comes  along 
and  an  army  of  enchanted  spectators  promptly 
springs  from  the  city  pavements  to  crowd  the 
largest  house  in  town  for  months  on  end.  It  is  a 
wonderful  sight,  a  wonderful  thing  to  play  to. 
Fancy  being  the  villain  in  the  traditional 
march  in  front  of  the  curtain  after  the  third 
act,  stopping  half-way  across  in  a  gale  of  ec- 
static hisses,  slowly  taking  out  a  cigarette,  light- 
ing it,  and  saying  "Ha!"  to  a  crowd  like  that. 

The  sense  of  play  and  make-believe  in  which 
the  whole  is  conceived  is  proved  by  the  con- 
vention that  the  villain  must  be  the  hand- 
somest of  men.  We  want  no  shabby,  sneaking 
meannesses — to  remind  us,  perhaps,  of  our 
own — but  a  liveried  Satan  who  does  his  vil- 
lainy proudly  and  with  an  air.  In  "The  Whip," 
I  remember,  the  hero  was  played  by  an  un- 
known youth  whom  none  would  have  turned  to 
look  at  in  a  crowd — his  virtue  had  to  do  for 
him — while  Captain  Sartoris  was  a  Greek  god 

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The  New  Drama  and  Drury  Lane 

and  a  tailor's  dream.  How  gracefully  fit  and 
guardsman-like  was  Mr.  Cyril  Keightly  as 
"Reeky"  Poole  in  that  well-written,  well- 
acted  and  wholly  artificial  piece  "The  Little 
Damozel"  a  few  years  ago — a  tall,  beautiful, 
bored  young  man  who  would  do  the  most 
abominable  things  with  a  winsome  seriousness 
which  made  them  seem  for  the  moment  not 
only  plausible  but  mournfully  inevitable.  And 
who  that  saw  him  will  forget  Mr.  W.  L.  Abing- 
don — one  of  our  most  accomplished  villains— 
in  "The  Sins  of  Society"?  His  fine,  rich  voice, 
his  precise  and  courteous  accent;  the  way  he 
would  saunter  in,  rising  the  least  bit  on  his  toes 
with  each  step,  and  move  up  stage  away  from 
Lady  Marion,  turn,  lean  on  the  garden-seat, 
take  out  his  cigarette  box,  snap  it  together 
and  tap  it  with  the  end  of  his  cigarette — all 
like  a  piece  of  smooth,  delightful  clockwork. 

Clockwork  he  was,  indeed,  and  therein  lies 
much  of  his  and  of  melodrama's  jolly  charm. 
From  a  world  foggy,  drab,  mixed-up,  and  puz- 
zling, we  come  into  one  all  straight  black  and 
white,  where  2+2  make  4.  There  is  the  same 
difference  between  the  villains  of  melodrama 
and  the  villains  of  life  as  between  the  personal 
devil  of  orthodox  religion,  whom  we  need  only 

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Second  Nights 


dodge  as  we  would  dodge  a  trolley-car,  and  the 
devil  of  the  rationalist,  which  consists  of  the 
weaknesses  and  temptations  inside  his  own 
head  and  must  be  fought  all  the  time.  The 
comfort  of  melodrama,  indeed,  is  that  of  or- 
thodoxy— the  world  is  romantic  and  yet 
secure,  we  go  through  fire  and  water,  yet 
know  all  the  time  that  we  are  going  to  be 
saved. 

Far  from  not  being  staked,  the  characters 
in  this  sort  of  play  must  be  staked  for  the  spec- 
tator's full  delight.  There  must  be  no  doubt, 
no  weak  human  quiver  in  their  perfect  arti- 
ficiality. For  the  semirealistic  horrors  of  a 
"Madame  X,"  for  instance,  to  which  people 
go  as  to  a  murder  trial  or  execution  and  are 
carried  out  in  hysterics,  I,  at  least,  have  no 
taste.  This  is  a  sort  of  hybrid  which  we  might 
very  well  do  without.  If  we  are  going  to  be 
harrowed,  let  it  be  done  by  one  of  these 
diamond-pointed  moderns,  who  enlighten  as 
well  as  hurt,  not  by  archaic  butchers  of  the 
physical  nerves. 

There  are  other  sorts  of  hybrid  drama  we 
might  very  well  do  without — the  Belasco- 
nian  wizardry,  for  instance — sawdust  insides 
masked  by  photographic  exteriors,  the  spot- 

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The  New  Drama  and  Drury  Lane 

light  turned  on  the  ingenue's  well-turned  neck 
as  she  lisps  her  maiden's  prayer. 

We  can  get  along  very  well  without  what 
Mr.  Galsworthy  calls  "bastard"  drama,  when 
that  means  the  hybrid  joining  of  unrelated 
things,  or  faking  and  insincerity.  Sunlight  and 
starlight  are  best,  of  course,  but  we  have  not 
quite  done  with  limelight,  provided  we  know 
clearly  it  is  limelight,  nor — for  an  occasional 
vacation — with  the  restful  old  characters  tied 
to  their  stakes. 

In  the  lighter  sort  of  play,  this  stake  tying 
must  always,  indeed,  be  the  resource  of  those 
more  gifted  with  wit  and  stage  facility  than  the 
habit  of  original  and  illuminating  thought.  In 
Pinero's  middle-aged  but  still  delightful  com- 
edy, "The  Amazons,"  for  instance,  two  of  the 
characters  are  scarcely  more  than  catchwords 
in  human  shape.  Tweenways,  the  absurd  little 
sprig  of  nobility,  with  his  complacent  "  We 
don't  do  so  and  so,"  and  the  impossible 
Frenchman,  forever  protesting  how  English 
he  is—  "French  by  birth,  yes!  But  English  to 
ze  back-bone!  I  play  your  sport,  I  speak  your 
language,  I  am  all  English  to  ze  back-bone, 
damn  it  all!"— these  are  utterly  stagy,  yet 
fresh  and  amusing  always,  because  in  a  light 

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Second  Nights 


and  unpretentious  way  they  embody  a  large 
general  truth. 

Mr.  Pinero  wrote  "The  Amazons"  long  be- 
fore he  was  knighted,  or  had  been  driven  by 
the  changing  dramatic  fashions  to  go  in  for 
"relentless  realism"  and  his  own  brand  of 
new  drama — when  he  was  still  a  mere  light 
man  of  the  theatre.  If  he  were  writing  of 
Frenchmen  or  decadent  aristocrats  to-day  he 
would  probably  try  to  be  much  more  pene- 
trating and  elaborate,  and  very  likely  end  in 
being  merely  stodgy  and  uninspired.  In  climb- 
ing the  hill  of  Helicon  every  man,  it  seems, 
must  go  his  own  pace.  That  which  he  does  nat- 
urally seems  to  have  a  vitality  and  strength  he 
cannot  achieve  by  trying  to  pull  himself  up  by 
his  boot-straps  into  some  other  man's  gait. 
And  the  light  man  of  the  theatre,  or  of  any 
other  place,  will  often  be  more  likely  to  say 
something  worth  hearing  if  he  continue  with 
his  lightness  than  if  he  pull  a  long  face  and  try 
to  talk  like  a  philosopher. 


[  374  1 


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